LIBRARY
OF THK
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
indisputably the finest female portrait in the world"
SIR THOS. LAWRENCE TO THE R.A. STUDENTS, 1824
THE
INCOMPARABLE
SIDDONS
BY
MRS. CLEMENT PARSONS
AUTHOR OF "GARRICK AND HIS CIRCLE"
WITH TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS
Y )
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: METHUEN & CO,
1909
TO
KATE TERRY GIELGUD
AFFECTIONATELY
194224
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THIS book, though certainly no conclusive ' Life/ aims
at being a study of a personality, and, at the same
time, a contribution towards that definitive History of
the English Stage which is yet unwritten. In the case of an
art that can bequeath no assurance of itself save the recorded
impression created on contemporary observers, sifting and
collating of descriptive notes and criticisms are peculiarly
needed. From a mass of data, accumulated during three
years' search, I have attempted to construct an image,
approximately true, of the foremost example of genius in
woman this country has produced, one who, in words Irving
used concerning her, "helped to make the name of England
illustrious throughout the world." I have tried to disentangle
from her kinsfolk and fellow-artists the individual self of
Sarah Siddons, and to summarise, as authentically as, at this
distance of time, is possible, her style, ideals, and methods.
The sense of a woman-artist's duality, both as to life-work
and character, must be present with her biographer, but, far
more particularly if she was an actress, a conviction emerges
of the decided extent to which the artist self impinged on the
woman self. Whoever writes a great actress's memoir traces
a twofold story, full of curious psychologic correlation.
The wonder is that half a dozen adequate biographies of
Mrs. Siddons do not exist. Midway in her career, John
Taylor, sometime an oculist, afterwards author of Monsieur
Tonson and proprietor of The Sun, proposed to her to write
a narrative, to date, but she discouraged the idea, apparently
vii
viii THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
from a feeling that a friend's biography of a living person is
bound to appear fulsome to outsiders. Boaden was the next
aspirant. Four years before the death of his ' biographee,'
fifteen after her retirement, he published his earlier edition of
Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons. No tyro at dramatic biography,
he was, at the time, sixty-five — which may account for his
digressions and touch of Polonius. His book has been unduly
condemned, notably by Mrs. Siddons's nephew, J. M. Kemble,
who wished to kick him for it, and asked W. B. Donne whether
it was not "abominable that such a fellow should perfectly
unauthorised sit down, to scribble on a subject of all others
the most ticklish, when in addition to the drawback of knowing
nothing whatever of his hero, he adds that of knowing very
little more of his own language." Boaden was long-winded,
and, sometimes, cryptic, as where, writing of Cumberland's
Carmelite, he regretted that "the hideous Hildebrand alone
presses the green floorcloth of dramatic expiation," but he
was a sound judge of plays and playing, and he wrote like
a gentleman. Turning over his pages while writing my own,
I recalled North's reply to Hogg's question, " Hae ye read
Boaden's Life d Siddons, sir ? " "I have, James — and I
respect Mr. Boaden for his intelligent criticism. He is rather
prosy occasionally — but why not? God knows, he cannot
be more prosy than I am now at this blessed moment."
I cannot say, with Campbell, that I " applied " so arduously
to write on Mrs. Siddons that my physicians " told me that
unless I desisted I should sacrifice my own life to " hers. The
authorised biography, dilatorily published in 1834, that cost so
much travail, reflects, for the most part, its writer's inappetency.
Campbell did not hold, with Cicero, that " Vitce bene actejucun-
dissima est recordatio" The materials for a determinate work —
numerous letters, autograph Memoranda and diary — placed by
Mrs. Siddons in his hands for use after her death, disappeared,
under his charge, and in their place we have a piece of joyless
task-work, as he himself avowed his book to be. Mrs. Jameson
AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix
greatly desired to write a biography while Mrs. Siddons's
memory was yet green, but the way was jealously barred
by Campbell. He, meantime, so mismanaged or neglected
his material that for the most characteristic and informative
of Mrs. Siddons's letters we have to turn to Journals and
Correspondence of Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, where they are
incidental, and not the staple. In our day, two works have
appeared concerning Mrs. Siddons. In Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's
The Kembles, she stands as the principal member of a dis-
tinguished family, while Mrs. Kennard's competent monograph
professes only to be a brief abstract of her history.
After the lapse of three quarters of a century, biographers
should tell, surely, not whatever can be told, but whatever is
worth telling. To me, the majority of old playbills seem dead
leaves on the Tree of Useless Knowledge, and, therefore, I have
not weighted my book with the thousand obtainable details of
first night dates of forgotten tragedies, the number of nights
each ran, the number of Mrs. Siddons's appearances season by
season, etc. These trifles form scarcely even the framework
of the real memorabilia.
Besides thanks due to friends named elsewhere in this book,
it is a great pleasure to express my indebtedness to others who
have helped me, either by the loan of letters and pictures or
the gift of items of out-of-the-way information. To the late
Mrs. Quintin Twiss and to her family I have been specially
obliged. Mr. H. G. I. Siddons, also, has elucidated for me
several points of family history. I wish to record my gratitude
to Mr. Oswald G. Knapp, Mr. J. H. Leigh, the Rev. N. F. Y.
Kemble, Miss Gwenllian Morgan, Mrs. H. Barham Johnson,
Lady Brooke, Captain Horatio Kemble, R.N., Mr. Joseph Hill,
and Mr. Alfred Parsons.
Lawrence, at Dr. Whalley's request, made a delightful draw-
ing of Cecilia Siddons, which passed into the possession of
Whalley's greatnephew, the Rev. Hill Wickham, to the kindness
of whose daughter, its present owner, Lady Seymour, I owe
x THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
the inclusion of a reproduction. To Mr. W. S. Brassington,
Mrs. Seymour Fort, Mr. N. Beard, and Miss Mary M. Watts
I am indebted for divers sorts of help. I gladly make my
acknowledgments to Messrs. George Allen & Sons and to
Messrs. Chatto & Windus for their courteous permission to me
to quote from works published by them, also to the Editors of
the Nineteenth Century and Notes and Queries for leave to quote
from articles.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE . . . . . . vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... xiii
WORKS CONSULTED . . . . . .XV
DATES AND EVENTS ...... xviii
I. YOUNG GIRLHOOD .... . I
II. FALSE DAWN : 1775 .... . l8
III. MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE . • 31
IV. THE BATH CIRCLE .... -44
V. CONQUEST OF LONDON ... • 52
VI. THE WAY OF HER GENIUS ... -7°
VII. SOME EARLY PARTS .... 8 1
VIII. HER STARRING EXPERIENCES ... -95
IX. HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE . .114
X. JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE . . . . . -133
XI. OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS . . . . -147
XII. PIZARRO AND SHERIDAN, AND VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAY-
WRIGHTS . . . . . . • .156
XIII. PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES . . . l68
XIV. HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN . . . . .183
XV. FRIENDS . . . . . . • .211
XVI. ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER IN MATURITY . . 228
XVII. GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES ..... 249
XVIII. MRS. SIDDONS'S RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS . . 263
XIX. LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS .... 276
APPENDIXES ....... 290
INDEX . . . . . . . -293
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE . . . Frontispiece
From the Engraving by FRANCIS HAWARD, after the Painting by
REYNOLDS
FACING
PAGE
MRS. SIDDONS'S BIRTHPLACE ...... 2
From a Drawing in Campbell's Life of Mrs. Siddons. The modern
Photograph by Mr. R. E. CHARLES
ROGER KEMBLE . . . . . . . .8
From the Miniature by OZIAS HUMPHREYS in the Shakespeare
Memorial Collection, Stratford -upon -Avon. Reproduced by
permission of the Governors of the Shakespeare Memorial.
Photograph by Mr. L. C. KEIGHLEY PEACH
Guv's CLIFFE ........ 16
From a Drawing by ALFRED PARSONS, A.R.A., in The Warwickshire
Avon. Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Harper &
Brothers
A GARRICK-SIDDONS PLAYBILL . . . . .28
By kind permission of the owner, J. H. Leigh, Esq.
MRS. SIDDONS. FROM AN OIL SKETCH BY ROMNEY . . 38
(Till recently, this sketch had been a hundred years in the possession
of the Martineau family. )
MRS. SIDDONS IN REYNOLDS'S STUDIO . . . .62
From an Oil Painting by Sir W. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A. Reproduced
by permission of the Fine Art Society
MRS. SIDDONS. BY AN UNKNOWN PAINTER . . .76
In the Dyce Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum
MRS. SIDDONS. BY GAINSBOROUGH . . . . .108
From the Picture in the National Gallery
A PAGE FROM PROFESSOR G. J. BELL'S NOTES ON MRS. SIDDONS'S
PLAYING OF LADY MACBETH . . . . .122
By kind permission of the owner, F. Jeffrey Bell, Esq.
xiii
xiv THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
FACING
PAGE
THE KEMBLE FAMILY IN HENRY vin . . . .128
From the Mezzotint by GEORGE CLINT, after the Painting by G. H.
HARLOW
MRS. SIDDONS, AS LADY MACBETH . . . . .144
From the scarce Lithograph after HARLOW. By kind permission of
the owner, the Rev. Martin S. Ware
MRS. SIDDONS. BY THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A. . . .158
From the Oil Painting Mrs. Siddons's Daughter, Mrs. Combe,
bequeathed, in 1868, to the National Gallery
WILLIAM SIDDONS. BY JOHN OPIE, R.A. . . . .184
From the Oil Painting Mrs. Siddons's Daughter, Mrs. Combe,
bequeathed, in 1868, to the National Gallery
MARIA SIDDONS . . . . . . . .194
From a Sketch in Oils by LAWRENCE. Reproduced by kind permission
of Lord Ronald Gower and Messrs. Goupils' Successors
CECILIA SIDDONS ....... 200
From a Crayon Drawing by LAWRENCE. By kind permission of the
owner, Lady Seymour
A LETTER FROM MRS. SIDDONS ON THE DEATH OF HER SON . 218
By kind permission of the owner, J. H. Leigh, Esq.
MRS. SIDDONS. BY G. H. HARLOW . . . . .238
WESTBOURNE FARM ....... 260
From an Engraving by I. HASSELL, after a Drawing by P. GALINDO
MRS. SIDDONS. ATTRIBUTED TO JOACHIM SMITH . . .282
From a Bust in the Shakespeare Memorial Collection, Stratford-upon-
Avon. Reproduced by permission of the Governors of the Shake-
speare Memorial. Photograph by Mr. L. C. KEIGHLEY PEACH
WORKS CONSULTED
Some Account of the English Stage from 1660-1830. By the Rev. John Genest.
10 vols., 1832.
Drury Lane Theatre. A collection of documents, playbills, newspaper cuttings etc.,
relative to this theatre from the earliest period [1616] to 1830, chronologically
arranged by Mr. James Winston. 23 vols. (British Museum, B.K.S. 3. i. etc.).
" A collection of materiel towards an history of the English stage collected by Richard
John Smith." 25 vols. (Extra-illustrated memoirs, newspaper cuttings, etc.
British Museum, 118, 26 r, s.)
" Collections relating to Garrick by Capt. James Saunders." 4 vols. (MSS and
newspaper cuttings. In the Shakespeare Birthplace Library, Henley Street,
Stratford-upon-Avon. )
Dramatic Miscellanies. By Thomas Davies. 3 vols., 1784.
Annals of the English Stage. Their Majesties' Servants. By Dr. Doran. Edited
and revised by Robert W. Lowe. 3 vols., 1888.
A History of Theatrical Art. By Karl Mantzius. Eng. Trans, by Louisevon Cossel.
Vol. v., 1909.
Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons. By James Boaden. 1827 ; reprinted 1896.
Life of Mrs. Siddons. By Thomas Campbell. 2 vols., 1834.
Journals and Correspondence of Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, edited by the Rev.
Hill Wickham. 2 vols., 1863.
An Artist's Love Story. Edited by Oswald G. Knapp. 1904.
Record of a Girlhood. By Frances Anne Kemble. 3 vols., 1878.
Recollections of the Past. By E. H. M. [Mrs. Mair]. 1877.
Memoirs of the Life of J. P. Kemble. By James Boaden. 2 vols., 1825.
Biographical notices of players, by Joseph Knight, in Dictionary of National Bio-
graphy. 63 vols., 1885-1900.
The Kembles. By Percy Fitzgerald. 2 vols., 1871.
Mrs. Siddons. By Mrs. A. Kennard (Eminent Women Series). 1887.
The Life and Times of the Venerable Father John Kemble, Priest and Martyr. By
Richard Raises Bromage. 1902.
xvi THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
The Theatrical Portrait, a poem on the celebrated Mrs. Siddons in the characters of
Calista, Jane Shore, Belvidera, and Isabella. 1783.
The Siddoniad. 1785.
The Beauties of Mrs. Siddons : or a review of her performance of the characters of
Belvidera, etc., in letters from a lady of distinction to her friend in the
country. 1786.
The Green-Room Mirror, chiefly delineating our present theatrical performers. 1786.
Papers literary, scientific, etc. By H. C. Fleeming Jenkin. 2 vols., 1887. (Con-
taining G. J. Bell's notes, taken in the theatre, on Mrs. Siddons's acting. )
Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres. By the Author of the
Theatrical Criticisms in the Weekly Paper called "The News" \_i.c. Leigh
Hunt]. 1807.
Dramatic Essays by Leigh Hunt. Edited by William Archer and Robert W.
Lowe. 1894.
A View of the English Stage. By William Hazlitt. 1818.
Table-Talk. By William Hazlitt. 2 vols., 1822.
Dramatic Essays by William Hazlitt. Edited by William Archer and Robert W.
Lowe. 1895.
Notes on some of Shakespeare's Plays. By Frances Anne Kemble. 1882.
Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag. By George Somes Layard. 1906.
Sir Thomas Lawrence. By Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower. 1900.
Thomas Lawrence et la Societe Anglaise de son Temps. Three articles by T. de
Wyzewa in Tomes 5 et 6 (1891) of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Paris).
The Private Correspondence of David Garrick. (Edited by James Boaden.)
2 vols., 1831.
Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald. By James Boaden. 2 vols., 1833.
Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds. Written by himself. 2 vols., 1826.
Records of my Life. By John Taylor. 2 vols., 1832.
An Old Man's Diary. By John Payne Collier. 1871-72.
Lady Morgan's Memoirs. Edited by W. Hepworth Dixon. 2 vols., 1862.
A Memoir of Charles Mayne Young. By Julian Charles Young. 2 vols., 1871.
Macready's Reminiscences. Edited by Sir F. Pollock, Bart. 2 vols., 1875.
Diary of the Right Hon. William Windham (1784-1810). Edited by Mrs. Henry
Baring. 1866.
The Life of Sir Walter Scott. By John Gibson Lockhart. Edinburgh Edition.
10 vols., 1902.
Scott's "Reviewal of Boaden's Memoirs of Kemble," Quarterly Review, No. 67,
April 1826, and in Miscellaneous Works, XX.
Reminiscences and Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. 1903.
Memoirs of his Own Life. By Tate Wilkinson. 4 vols., 1790.
The Wandering Patentee. By Tate Wilkinson. 4 vols., 1795.
WORKS CONSULTED xvii
The Life of Mrs. Jordan. By James Boaden. 2vols.,i83i.
Personal Sketches of his Own Times (Vol. II. (a), A Memoir [by the Editor], (b)
Mrs. Jordan, (c) Mrs. Jordan in France). By Sir Jonah Barrington, 3 vols.
(1827). Edited by Townsend Young, LL.D. 1869.
Tea-Table Talk. By Mrs. Mathews. 2 vols., 1857.
Memoirs of the Life of William Henry West Betty. Liverpool, 1804.
The Struggle for a Free Stage in London. By Watson Nicholson. 1906.
NOTICEABLE DATES IN MRS. SIDDONS'S
LIFE
GEORGE II (1727-1760)
1755. Birtn of Sarah Kemble (afterwards Siddons) at Brecon.
GEORGE III (1760-1820)
1773. Sarah Kemble married to William Siddons at Coventry.
1774. Henry, Mrs. Siddons's eldest child, born.
1775. Sarah Martha (Sally), her second child, born. Drury Lane engagement
with Garrick.
1776. Return to the provinces.
1779. Maria, Mrs. Siddons's third child, born.
1781. Frances Emilia, her fourth child, born. Dies in infancy.
1782. Mrs. Siddons's restoration to Drury Lane and triumph there.
1784. Reynolds exhibits Mrs. Siddons's portrait as 'The Tragic Muse.'
1785. Mrs. Siddons first plays Lady Macbeth. George John, her fifth child, born.
1788. Mrs. Siddons first plays Queen Katharine.
1789. First plays Volumnia.
1791. Drury Lane Theatre pulled down.
1794. Holland's new Drury Lane opens with Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth. Cecilia,
Mrs. Siddons's sixth and youngest child, born.
1796. Kemble throws up Drury Lane Management.
1798. Death of Maria Siddons.
1800-1. Kemble resumes Drury Lane Management, but, failing to enter into pro-
prietorship, goes over (1802-3) to Covent Garden, purchasing a share.
1802. Roger Kemble dies.
1803. Sally Siddons dies. Mrs. Siddons, having quitted Drury Lane the previous
year, now commences to act at Covent Garden, but plays no new
character there.
1804. Mrs. Siddons settles at Bath.
1805-6. Mrs. Siddons engaged at Covent Garden from now till her retirement.
1808. Death of Mr. Siddons. Covent Garden Theatre burnt. Prince of Wales lays
stone of new Covent Garden.
1809. Drury Lane Theatre burnt. New Covent Garden opened, O.P. riots.
DATES AND EVENTS xix
THE REGENCY (1811-1820)
1812. Mrs. Siddons's last appearances and retirement.
1815. Death of Henry Siddons.
GEORGE IV (1820-1830)
WILLIAM IV (1830-1837)
1831. Death of Sarah Siddons, aged seventy-six, in London.
THE
INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
i
YOUNG GIRLHOOD
1755. "July itfh Sarah Daughter of George Kemble a
Comedian & Sarah his Wife was baptized"
A TTESTED by ' Thomas Bevan. Curate/ so stands, in
the Register of St. Mary's Church, Brecon, the baptism
certificate of Sarah Kemble, afterwards Siddons.
Apparently, the curate was not sufficiently interested in the
strolling Manager to set down his name, Roger Kemble,
correctly.
Roger Kemble's eldest child was born, nine days before her
christening, at an inn in Brecon High Street. As an inn,
the Shoulder of Mutton exists no longer. The same building
is now a tavern — the Siddons Wine Vaults — and, thinly
lettered on an oblong white marble tablet, high above its
licence inscription, is just legible —
IN THIS HOUSE
MRS. SIDDONS
WAS BORN JULY 5, 1/55
The ' Siddons ' has totally lost the picturesque appearance
it possesses in the old drawing the Rev. Thomas Price sent
Pleasures-of-Hope Campbell for Mrs. Siddons's biography.
The gable has long been removed, and the timbered front
buried under stucco. Beyond the ' Siddons/ Brecon may be
searched in vain for traces of the divine Sarah. The font in
2 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
which she was baptized was turned out at the 'restoration1
of St. Mary's, in 1858, and given to a little church in the
neighbourhood, Capel St. Illtyd. The back door of the
1 Siddoris ' opens into Church Street, through which the baby
was probably taken to the north-west door of St. Mary's for
her christening.
The county that also cradled Henry Vaughan, Sir Bartle
Frere, and Dr. Bradley, Dean of Westminster, can only lay
claim to the most intellectual actress who ever interpreted
Shakespeare by the accident of birthplace. She was no more
a Welshwoman than Swift was an Irishman, or Garrick a
native of Hereford. On the Wiltshire border of Gloucester-
shire, not far from Widhill, there is a village called Kemble,
and from that district living members of the Kemble ' clan '
believe the family to have sprung. At the same time, the
name ' Kemble/ which occurs in Domesday Book, and is
traceable to the north side of the Loire, supplies another
corroboration of the popular belief that for genius a strain
of the Kelt is needed. Meanwhile, Hereford remains the
ascertainable headquarters of Mrs. Siddons's near progenitors.
The careers of renowned players are apt to open amid an
uproar of parental objections, but Sarah Kemble was bred
for the stage as well as born for it. Her nursery was the
improvised greenroom of the barn; most of the men and
women who caressed or ignored her were players ; as soon
as she could commit to memory, recite, and drop a curtsey, she
was led down the boards by her mother that she might help
to boil the family pot by her baby graces. It is told how,
at the old Brecon Theatre, on some very early occasion, of
date not recoverable, when an audience signified, in the usual
manner, its disapproval of the entrance of so infantile a
phenomenon, Mrs. Kemble, adding to the quick-wittedness
of the public performer her native decision of character, made
the mite justify herself by an impromptu delivery of an
apposite fable — c The Boy and the Frogs/
"<5Tis death to us, though sport to you,
Unthinking, cruel boy ! ' "
tinkled forth little Miss, and the house took her to their
AS IT WAS IN 1755
AS IT IS
MRS. SIDDONS'S BIRTHPLACE
,
^
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 3
hearts. A certain * Petronius Arbiter, Esq./ alleges of one
of Mrs. Siddons's foremost comic contemporaries, ' Betsey '
Farren, that, as a girl, she used to transport the drum of her
travelling troupe from place to place on her head. It should be
explained that, to save handbill expenditure, the strolling com-
panies announced their arrival in a fresh town by beat of drum,
and if, as stated, the youngest lady really walked under the
drum, when funds were too low for van hire, it is not impossible
that Reynolds's Tragic Muse may have owed something of the
caryatid poise of her neck to this utilitarian exercise, just as
Southern peasant women owe theirs to their balanced amphorae.
Roger Kemble was not one of those down-at-heel beings,
seedy and servile, or blue-nosed and raffish, whom we call up at
the word 'stroller.' Though not much of an actor, he was
blessed with a sound mind, and was a man of placid, pleasant
manners. His earnings averaged only ^350 per annum, we
are to judge from an income account of his, preserved by the
first secretary of the Garrick Club, and, in part, printed by Mr.
Fitzgerald (Lives of the Kembles, ii. 68), but the self-respect
that became so dominant in the next generation was well
developed in him. For all that his brother was a barber at
Hereford undenied, and he himself was rumoured to have cast
aside the curling-irons and combs to 'commence actor/ he
liked to link himself with historic ancestors, with Captain
Richard Kemble, who saved the life of Charles II by giving him
his horse at the battle of Worcester, and with the Venerable
Father John Kemble, described as the speaker's great-grand-
uncle (after whom John Philip was, partly, it may be, named),
a proscribed priest, hanged in Hereford, his county town, on
August 22nd, 1679, during the Gates scare. His dismembered
body was begged by Captain Kemble, who buried it at Welsh
Newton, and thither, ever since, on every 22nd of August, has
fared a Catholic Pilgrimage, starting from Monmouth. The
hand of John Kemble is preserved, in the sacristy, at the church
of St. Francis Xavier at Hereford, and a piece of linen dipped
in his blood is at Downside. When summoned to execution, he
asked for time to smoke a final pipe. No actor could have
shown more composure. A comparison of portraits of Roger
Kemble and his children with a picture derived from the pen-
4 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
and-ink sketch made of Father Kemble, in 1679, by the
Governor of Hereford Gaol, shows a remarkable facial likeness,
especially as to the long ' Kemble ' nose.
I have heard descendants of the Kemble family bewail that
their efforts to trace a continuous line are baffled by * the father-
less Roger,' i.e. Roger (l) the grandfather of Mrs. Siddons. If
the statement be correct that Father John Kemble's nephew, the
above-mentioned Captain Richard Kemble, of Pembridge Castle,
Welsh Newton, Herefordshire, had three sons, George, Richard,
and Roger, it is not unthinkable that this third son, Roger, may
have been father of 'the fatherless Roger.' Owing to the
Kemble family having been ' recusant,' no parish register helps
in tracing their descent, but since, in days of Catholic disabilities
and ruinous fining, it was inevitable that many members of
Roman Catholic families of position should sink in the social
scale, it would not be surprising to find the landowning Captain
Kemble's direct and near descendant, first, a wig-maker, and,
afterwards, a vagrant comedian. " Our branch of the family/'
said the historian, John Mitchell Kemble, elder son of Mrs.
Siddons's brother, Charles, " descends from George Kemble of
Pembridge Castle, as I have often heard the tradition of the
family to be, and so to William of Wydell " [Widhill].
I have before me a Kemble pedigree, owned by Stephen
Kemble's eldest grandson, the Rev. N. F. Y. Kemble, wherein
Roger's immediate associations are thus specified (see opposite
page).
There is, it must freely be confessed, such a preponderance
of uncertainty in establishing any family links above Mrs.
Siddons's father, that the late Mr. Knight was, for summarizing
purposes, justified in his designation (in the Dictionary of National
Biography] of this Roger as ' head of the Kemble family.'
While the fact that Mrs. Siddons's father was, in a mild
way, Roman Catholic, corroborated his kinship with the
confessor, Father John, his solicitude to belong to somebody
gave accent to his character. From his miniature portrait in
the Stratford-upon-Avon Memorial Collection we see that Sarah
was featured like her father. The straight, long nose and the
air of dignity came from him. James Boaden thought that
Roger and his children strikingly resembled Charles the First,
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6 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
but Mrs. Siddons said her father was very like George the
Third, and it is hard to reconcile the two kingly likenesses.
Boaden, who first met Roger Kemble when he was old enough
to have 'silver curls/ found him sitting in his son John's
library. " Our introduction to each other was at once simple
and expressive. 'This, sir, is my father.' And, to the old
gentleman, 'Allow me to present to you my friend, Mr.
Boaden.' " Boaden thus inflates the simple and expressive fact
that Roger Kemble was wearing a skull-cap : " From a peculiar
costume that he had adopted from the liability to take cold
(a partial silk covering for the head,) he looked to me rather
like a dignitary of the church two centuries back, than a
layman of the present age."
In common with most of the other actors of my story,
Roger Kemble had the good sense to fix his affections within
the profession. His wife started existence as Sarah Ward.
She was the daughter of John Ward, another strolling Manager,
of whose corps Roger was a member, his suit being for some
time opposed by his Sarah's father. The opposition was on
general, not personal, grounds, if we may at all rely on this
quaint paragraph from the Globe , December 3ist, 1807: —
" The late Mr. Ward made a solemn vow of eternal warfare
against his daughter should she marry an actor. The young
lady soon after married Mr. Kemble, the father of Mrs. Siddons,
a gentleman for some time upon the stage. ' Well, my dear
child, you have not disobeyed me, the d-v-1 himself could not
make an actor of your husband/ "
Variants of this story occur passim ; unfortunately, the
pleasantry is sometimes attributed, not to Ward re Kemble,
but to Kemble re Siddons.
Ward, who had, as a child, played under Betterton, was
the Manager who, at Stratford, in 1746, gave the benefit of
Othello towards recolouring the chancel bust of Shakespeare,
a large-minded action which, indirectly, led 'meddling' Malone,
in horror at the gaudy pigments employed, to take up his
whiting brush. Like his son-in-law, Ward did not fulfil the
popular notion of an itinerant. In the irresponsible stage
histories of his day, he is termed an Irishman — for no reason
the present investigator can discover beyond the facts that he
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 7
once acted (with Miss Peg Woffington) at the Aungier Street
Theatre, Dublin, and that his daughter was born at Clonmel.
Actually, he and his family were well known locally as 'the
Wards of Leominster,' at Leominster they were married and
buried, while Roger Kemble, who ' inherited ' Ward's company
and circuit, made all his professional peregrinations in the western
midlands, between such places as Coventry, Warwick, Worcester,
Droitwich, Bewdley, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury,
and Ludlow, with, as we have seen, a reach across the marches
of Wales. On the tomb, dated 1773, below which lie Ward's
bones, ' waiting for our Saviour's great Assize ' (and never did
an epitaph better represent the Georgian religious tone), the
defunct is ' John Ward, Gent.' Close by his are the graves of
his near relatives, Thomas and Humphrey Ward, the first a
'sincere Christian' of 'talents greatly successful,' the second,
and earlier (born, 1705), something more, it would appear, than
technically a stroller, since his inscription reads,
"Stop traveller
I've past and repast seas and distant lands
Can find no rest but in my Saviour's hands."
Mrs. Roger Kemble proved herself a fine, old-fashioned,
Biblical mother. She brought her husband (as the phrase was)
four sons and eight girls. The girls, according to the rule the more
insistent religion no longer tolerates, were bred Protestants, the
boys to the faith of their father. John Philip Kemble, intended
for the priesthood, received his later education at Douai, in
the still existing English Benedictines' College for the training
of English priests, — it had been the ancestral Father Kemble's
seminary, — and thither, at John Philip's charges, sixteen years
afterwards, went his brother, Charles.
Circumlocutory Boaden, publishing Mrs. Siddons's memoirs
during her lifetime, remarks : " Mrs. Siddons, I have always
understood to be senior to her brother, Mr. Kemble, by two
years." John was born in Lancashire, at Prescott, probably
the most outlying of the company's pitches. Charles, the
Kembles' eleventh and penultimate child, and the only other
who at all approached Sarah and John in brain power, came
into the world, at Brecon, twenty years later than his eldest
8 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
sister. The entry of his baptism, too, is in the Register of
St. Mary's Church, and he also was baptized in the now cast-
out font It is noticeable that the indisputable genius was the
eldest, the next in talent the second — an instance to be cited
in opposition to those theorists who maintain that the star of
a large family always comes midway in the list.
Fortunately for her player-husband, Mrs. Roger Kemble
was a woman who put her best foot foremost, and took bulls by
their horns. 'The old lioness,' Lawrence, who painted her
portrait, used to call her, anticipating Thackeray's ' grand old
lioness,' to describe her grandchild, Fanny, Charles Kemble's
elder daughter, who believed she bore a strong resemblance
to the Kemble grandmother she never saw. She, by the
way, suggested that Mrs. Roger was a Volumnia of real life
to the Coriolanus of her son, John, to whom, quite in the spirit
of this, we elsewhere read of her saying, " Sir, you are as proud
as Lucifer!"
Mrs. Kemble instilled into Sarah her own clear-cut articu-
lation— each syllable round and distinct ; she taught her singing
and the harpsichord ; she vetoed Roger's engagement of an
out-at-elbows eccentric, William Combe, the future author of
* Dr. Syntax/ to coach her in elocution. She was no dragger-up
of children, but a vigorous, purposeful, probably unimagi-
native mere de famille. She died in 1806, aged seventy-one.
Roger Kemble died in 1802, aged eighty-one. They both
could remember having acted with Quin.
Kemble and his wife did their best to provide the two-thirds
of their children who survived the perils of eighteenth-century
infancy with all the schooling attainable in untoward circum-
stances. Migratory players' families were as liable to missing
the three R's as canal people's, but wherever the Kemble cart
made a protracted halt a school was sought out. At Worcester,
a Mrs. Harris, who ruled over a certain Thornlea House, gave
the little Sarah lessons free of charge. Mrs. Harris's other
young ladies were prepared to make the stroller's child feel her
position, but her magnificent usefulness on an occasion of school
theatricals, and her talent for improvising sacque-backs for them
all, out of grocers' stiff sugar paper, converted her into their
heroine. We may wonder whether the day-girls brought her,
ROGER KEMBLE
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 9
in tribute, those 'Worcester fat cakes' of which, forty years
after, she fondly remembered she ' could have eaten half a dozen '
at a sitting.
This Thornlea House note is one of the only two attainable
1 traits ' of Mrs. Siddons's childhood. The other is in a different
key, and, to the reader disposed to take more interest in her as
a human character than as an actress, will appear even more
significant of things to come. It narrates how she retired to
rest one night, so absorbed in the hope of ' a pleasure party '
next day, which was to include the wearing of a beatific,
brand-new, pink, or, as they said then, pink-coloured gown (the
skirt of which, circ. 1765, we may picture as pleated in thickly
round a long, pointed bodice), that she took with her to bed the
Book of Common Prayer opened at the Prayer for fair Weather.
At dawn, she was waked by a deluge against her window. She
looked down at her sortes. The Prayer for Rain obstinately
confronted her. Instead of tossing the talisman out of bed, she
re-marked the petition near to her heart, and addressed her
again to sleep. Her next experience was sunshine at rising
and the pink-coloured gown. It seems singular that both these
glimpses into Mrs. Siddons's child-life should concern clothes,
seeing that she eventually became a careless dresser. We can
better trace in her renewed trial of the cross-grained Prayer Book
a foretaste of the tenacity, and, also, of the temperance — the
composure — of her adult character.
There can hardly be another instance of the childhood of a
genius who belongs to the modern world which offers so little
as Sarah Kemble's in satisfaction of our hunger for anecdote.
What is not an anecdote, but illustrative, all the same, is the
record of the early commencement of her lifelong devotion to
Milton. She told Campbell that when she was ten she used
to pore over Paradise Lost l for hours together.' It is pleasant to
think of the serious little girl — this Catholic strolling actor's
child — responding to the great Puritan's austere elevation.
By the time she was eleven, Sarah was playing in Shake-
speare-£#w-Dryden and Davenant's Tempest, as Ariel, Chief
Spirit ; l in Havard's King Charles the First, as the young
1 At Worcester, April i6th, 1767, Mrs. Siddons's first recorded Shakespearean
appearance.
io THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Princess Elizabeth; in English operas, such as Love in a
Village, in which she played Rosetta ; in Murphy's Grecian
Daughter, where, tradition states, she laughed at the supremely
tragic moment ; and in The Padlock •, as Leonora. A contributor
to Notes and Queries of April 5th, 1862, speaks of having seen
a playbill of the theatre at Kington, Hereford, where Roger was
Manager (and where, in 1758, his son Stephen was born), "in
which the famous tragic actress is advertised to take the part
of Patty in The Maid of the Mill." The apt girl was juvenile
lead in the family company, and no longer had time to beat
the snuffers against the candlestick to suggest the sound that
should have been made by the windmill on the scene, which,
in her splendid days, Combe, her intercepted professor, talking
to Samuel Rogers, maliciously emphasised as her early employ-
ment. At Wolverhampton, Worcester, and, no doubt, elsewhere,
Roger Kemble evaded the responsibility of conducting a
theatrical entertainment without a licence by the celebrated
advertisement that the * Concert ' — in three parts — was free,
but that 'a quantity of Tooth-powder (from London)' was to
be sold at various agencies, in papers at 2s., is., or 6d. Very
likely, Sarah's rosy ringers helped to do up those chalk-filled
packets.
Lamb's friend, that Cobbett-like writer, Thomas Holcroft,
was, for some time, an assistant in the Kemble company.
Holcroft 's theatrical experiences occurred midway between his
nomadic and horsy youth and his play-writing and Radical
maturity. At this stage of his career, as we learn from John
Bernard's Retrospections of the Stage, he knew too little of spelling
and grammar to write a passable letter, yet his self-confidence
enabled him to apply ' for an engagement, embracing every
good part in the cast-book.' He joined the Kembles in circum-
stances calculated to prejudice him against them. He had
tramped, hungry, and, as the phrase went, completely minus,
from Leeds. On his arrival at Hereford, failing to find the
Manager, upon whose delayed letter to him of five weeks earlier
he had undertaken his journey, he was directed to Kemble's
brother, the barber. The barber and the barber's wife and
family were all indoors. They commented on his faint and
broken appearance, suffered him to tell his story, and, at its
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 11
conclusion, did not even offer to fill him out a glass of ale.
This meanness, he says in his Memoir s> made ' Mr Kemble's
company of Comedians,' when they heard of it, 'not a little
incensed.'
As Holcroft joined the Kembles not earlier than 1771, he
may never have acted with Mrs. Siddons. She married in 1773,
and thereupon returned to the company, but for the two
previous years she was away at Guy's Cliffe. It is hardly
thinkable that, had he acted with the queen rosebud, Holcroft
should not, later, have mentioned the fact. His reminiscences
were rather with the inconspicuous of the company, and concen-
trated themselves on a wastrel named Downing or Dunning,
whose trollopy wife habitually stood behind the scenes, with a
powder-puff, ready to rewhiten her George's too rubicund nose
each time he came off.
Under date February I2th, 1767, the playbill of King Charles
the First, at the Worcester * Theatre,' — a stable in the back yard
of the King's Head Inn, opposite the Town Hall, — contains a
line of anticipatory interest : —
" Duke of Richmond, Mr. Siddons."
Thus early, William Siddons (who took to the shifting stage
as more to his taste than being a barber's apprentice, his first
way of life) was a member of Kemble's company. Not till three
years later did he stand confessed as a serious soupirant for the
Manager's lovely daughter.
Siddons was a Walsall man. Mr. Joseph Hall, of Perry
Bar, has discovered for me, at St. Matthew's (the parish church),
Walsall, his baptismal entry, as follows : —
" 1744. Sept. 24. William Siddons son of Joseph"
In vol. ii. (published 1801) of the Rev. Stebbing Shaw's
History and Antiquities of Staffordshire^ under 'Walsall,' we
read that William Siddons's father kept a public-house (the
1 London Apprentice ') in Rushall Street, " and met with his
death in sparring or wrestling with one Denston." The future
husband of England's greatest actress is first heard of, theatri-
cally, as performing, as an amateur, in 1766, in a play, 'in the
malt-house of Mr. Samuel Wood on the Lime-pit bank,' Walsall.
The name ' Siddons ' is extant in Birmingham, Oundle, and
Wellingborough.
12 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
As we know, Sarah returned William's flame. Only less
remarkable than the slow development of her art was the pre-
cociousness of her womanly maturity. Bohemian circumstances
joined to a familiar acquaintance with the speech of heroines
make a girl a Juliet. She engaged herself to Siddons when she
was sixteen. He was eleven years older.
Sarah Siddons's first love-affair was the love-affair of her life.
She was too young wooed and too early married to have had
much previous time for the occupation later known in her own
domestic circle as conquest-making, but the characteristic fact
is that — actress, popular idol, beautiful woman though she was,
she never, after marriage, drifted into attachment to any one of
the various men who might so easily have come to interest her
more than Siddons. From being a maid she became a matron,
but as for embroideries on either theme, would as soon have
taken up with morpho-mania. Acting and the austere joys of
maternity were the all-sufficient emotional outlets of this rarely
constituted woman-artist. The little development in her of the
sexual element is a most noteworthy fact, seeing that a great
actress, a great courtesan, is the generalisation to which
theatrical history largely leads. To be a great actress, most
people would say, a woman must be plus femme que les autre*
femmes. The constant display and constantly realised effect of
personal charms, the perpetual, high-wrought emotionalism,
what the late Mr. Marion Crawford termed the 'overpowering
familiarities ' of the stage, all point one way. Yet, to this force-
ful stream of tendency Mrs. Siddons was a grand exception. Of
the libertinism which so often accompanies the artist that it
seems almost a necessary element in genius she knew nothing.
It was only a Glasgow enthusiast, ignorant of everything but
the effect on his nerves of her acting, who could say of her,
" She is a fallen angel ! " At the farthest remove from the more
or less typical La Faustin of Edmond de Goncourt, she presents,
indeed, a curious and instructive phenomenon, i.e. a woman of
essentially Puritan nature, into which genius, that mighty wind,
blowing where it listeth, inspired an unparalleled gift for acting.
The girl's course of love did not run smooth. Siddons was
handsome and looked quite the gentleman, and, by virtue of
these qualifications, played utility in Kemble's company —
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 13
Seneca was not too heavy, nor Plautus too light. He possessed
another useful asset in that he had a particularly quick study.
He could cram any part, however long, and be ' rotten perfect '
in a day. Beyond these three points in his favour, he had
nothing to offer, and Mr. and Mrs. Kemble took no joy in an
engagement they did not well know how to prevent between
their unpractised young beauty and this moneyless swain.
Had they recognised in him any promise of a second Powell,
or a second ' Gentleman ' Smith, they might have taken heart,
but they knew too much about acting for that. He, mean-
while, deep in love, did not trouble about the misgivings of
his fair one's encumbrances.
At this juncture, there emerged out of a cloud of Brecon-
shire admirers, one, Mr. Evans, with, it was understood, the
proposals of a solid and eligible passion. In Brecon, the
general opinion was that he had been bowled over by Sarah's
rendering of Leonora's song to her bird in The Padlock —
"No, no, no,
Sweet Robin, you shall not go ;
Where, you wanton, could you be
Half so happy as with me?"
Evans belonged, in a small way, to the landed class. He
had £300 a year, and was designated Squire of Pennant.
Upon his appearance, Mr. and Mrs. Kemble must be supposed
to have given their daughter a vivid sketch of the difference
between ^300 a year certain and nothing a year certain, for
Siddons, fearing the worst, proposed elopement. Sarah char-
acteristically declined such a step. The dimness that veils
every incident of her youth here becomes opaque, and it is
impossible to know whether, at this point, she did not waver in
favour of Evans. At least, Siddons thought she did. Bitter-
ness overflowed his heart, and he rushed to her parents, and
expressed with freedom what he thought of them. In reply,
Kemble gave him notice, tempering the dismissal by allowing
him a farewell benefit.
Siddons retired to meditate an immense revenge. It took
the form of an entr'acte imprfou, composed by himself. This
he delivered at the above-mentioned benefit (which proved a
bumper) between the play and the farce. We owe the disinter-
14 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
ment of the words of Siddons's ' song ' to ' Carnhuanawc ' Price,
who delivered them to the delighted Campbell, who said they
were worth their weight in five-pound notes. They, at any rate,
showed that Siddons had a long way yet to go before he could
behave like the gentleman he looked. They commenced,
"Ye ladies of Brecon, whose hearts ever feel
For wrongs like to this I'm about to reveal :
Excuse the first product, nor pass unregarded
The complaints of poor Colin, a lover discarded.
"At length the report [of Squire Evans's adoration] reach'd the
ears of his flame,
Whose nature he fear'd from the source whence it came ;
She acquainted her ma'a, who, her ends to obtain,
Determin'd poor Colin to drive from the plain."
There were nine more verses, and they all rhymed. Through-
out his life, Siddons had a readiness at vers d 'occasion.
The canticle was in egregiously bad taste, but poor Colin,
standing down at the floats, with, we may be sure, his fair face
deeply flushed with agitation, was in earnest. Sentiment, per-
secuted by worldly wisdom, is a safe theatrical stop, and the
Breconians, already hugely interested in the affair, and with all
an audience's fine carelessness as to a matter touching them-
selves so little as the financial irresponsibility of an actress's
would-be husband, applauded him vociferously. But, as Colin
went off the stage, trailing clouds of glory, an anticlimax
occurred. Mrs. Kemble met him at the greenroom door, and
Colin was clouted. Boxing ears was, at that period, the
recognised expression of feminine disapprobation.
The fact of Siddons being thus finally presented with the
key of the street either did nothing to encourage the Squire of
Pennant Sarah's Protestant to be, or, if it did, he was refused.
Mrs. Kennard thinks Sarah was unnaturally tolerant in clinging
to a sweetheart who had sung concerning her
" a jilt is the devil, as has long been confess'd,
Which a heart like poor Colin's must ever detest,"
but, clearly, she forgave him for the excellent reason that love
for her had turned his brain — amantes, amentes. We others
may rejoice that, by remaining staunch to her poor player,
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 15
instead of showing herself a girl of spirit, she was not untimely
torn from her vocation as the queen of tragedy to become
instead a queen of curds and cream, as wife to an agricultural
Welshman.
No doubt, there were tears, headaches, and words. It ended,
for the time being, in Sarah's accepting a situation, at £10 a
year, in the service of Lady Mary Greatheed, of Guy's Cliffe,
Warwick. The engagement between herself and her sweet
William was ratified. Her parents, though retiring in good
order, had been beaten. Such is nature's kindly law.
Lady Mary Greatheed, the widow of Samuel Greatheed,
M.P. for Coventry (ob. 1765), was born Lady Mary Bertie, a
daughter of Peregrine, second Duke of Ancaster. Her son, Bertie
Greatheed, was eleven in 1771. It was this son's granddaughter,
Anne Caroline Greatheed, whose marriage, in 1823, with Lord
Charles Percy, son of the first Earl of Beverley, eventually
brought the Guy's Cliffe property into the hands of its present
owner, the Duke of Northumberland's brother, Lord Algernon
Percy, to whose kindness in showing me various Kemble relics
and pictures I am much indebted. It remains hard to say
precisely what duties Sarah Kemble was originally engaged to
fulfil in the Greatheed household. In the family to-day it is
believed that her employment was that of reader, or companion-
reader, and, in all probability, it was into the congenial
specialty of reading aloud that she drifted ; but, in view of the
fact that Bertie Greatheed told Miss Williams Wynn he had
' been in the habit of hearing Mrs. Siddons read Macbeth even
from the period of her being his mother's maid,' we may perhaps
suppose that she entered on her duties in the elastic capacity of
maid-companion, but that her brains and refinement soon caused
the companion to predominate over the tirewoman. We know
that she constantly read her beloved Milton to the Greatheeds,
and we can guess what a brave new world their many books
opened to her. Not the least interesting of the few records of
this early connection of hers with Guy's Cliffe is a remark Lady
Mary Greatheed made to ' Conversation ' Sharp to the effect
that she used always to feel an irresistible inclination to rise
from her chair when her queenly-looking dependent entered the
room. The Duchess of Ancaster told the Rev. John Genest
16 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
that, when Lady Mary stayed with her in Lincolnshire, she
brought Mrs. Siddons with her, and the ci-devant young actress
" was fond of spouting in the servants' hall." The third Duke,
then Lord Brownlow Bertie, used to listen to her, and used,
also, presumably, to bring enthusiastic reports into the drawing-
room, for Lady Mary said, " Brother, don't encourage the girl,
you will make her go on the stage."
It is interesting to speculate on what so impossible a ' young
female ' as Sarah Kemble learnt from the serene orderliness of
her surroundings at Lady Mary's. The glitter of the table
silver must have meant a new standpoint, the mouldings of the
doors should have been a liberal education. There was much
in her temperament that responded to the new atmosphere, and,
while, in years to come, she was to grow intimately familiar
with many of the stately homes of England, now, manifestations
of wealth and taste and high position were rendered trebly
telling by their contrast to the scrambling existence — sordid
lodgings, ill-bred associates, and many mortifications — that
made up, not only life's daily portion in a strolling Manager's
family, but all she had hitherto known of the world.
Of the romantic beauty of the Guy's Cliffe estate many a
better poet had sung before that genuine admirer of ' elegant
nature,' the Rev. Richard Jago, who visited at the house
during Mrs. Siddons's period, discovered that
"Here the calm scene lulls the tempestuous breast
To sweet composure."
At this * Place meet for the Muses/1 in 1772, Miss Kemble
may well have sat at a mullioned upper window, as she did,
thirty years later, at Conway Castle — there, too, the river,
beneath, ' glowing in the balmy sunshine — till [the quoted words
are from her devoted Patty Wilkinson's travel diary] she
seemed absorbed in a luxuriant reverie.' The thoughts of youth
are long, long thoughts, and Sarah's at Guy's Cliffe were a
chaos of simmering artistic impulses blent with tenderness for
a man, whom she saw on a glorified plane, as actors are seen
across the lamps. So foolish is a girl that one must be certainly
right in imagining that Sarah's happiest moments in this
1 So Leland described Guy's Cliffe (The Itinerary, iv. Part the Second).
-sb
GUY'S CLIFFE
YOUNG GIRLHOOD 17
picturesque place were when Siddons (entering by the back door)
came to visit her, and they could stroll to the mill, or, under the
great cedars, to Guy's Cave above the mirroring Avon, and
laugh over their ancient misunderstanding, and drink together
at the wishing spring to the golden age, ahead, of mutual
happiness one and indivisible.
About two years passed before the day arrived when Sarah
bade a respectful farewell to the mistress who had treated her with
uniformly cordial encouragement. Little could either foresee
how, within a comparatively brief period, relative positions
would alter, and how the heir of that lordly house would, one
day, tremblingly offer his tragedy to ' his mother's maid,' and be
described by her as the ' poor young man.'
On November 26th, 1773, William Siddons and Sarah
Kemble, the latter then eighteen, became, in Sir Peter Teazle's
phrase, involved in matrimony. The ceremony took place in
Trinity Church, Coventry ; Roger gave his daughter away ; and,
no doubt, the pew-opener agreed with the clerk that the bride
and bridegroom were an uncommonly well-matched couple.
No unobstructed horizon lay before Sarah and her * Sid.1
It was arranged that, at any rate for awhile, they should both
resume work on the Kemble circuit, and Sarah was, for the
first time, announced as ' Mrs. Siddons/ on a Worcester playbill,
December I3th, 1773.
II
FALSE DAWN
IN the spring of 1775, Mrs. Siddons was acting, with
Younger's company, in Liverpool. " Have you ever
heard," inquired Garrick, writing, in April, to the ideal
stage Irishman, John Moody, at Liverpool, "of a woman
Siddons, who is strolling about somewhere near you ? "
To be continually on the look-out for new blood is part of
the art of Management, and Garrick had his spies and critics
always ready to run down, sometimes to unlikely places, to
report on the likely article. There was a William Stone at
Drury Lane Theatre whom he so habitually employed in
recruiting about London for subordinate actors that the
fellow acquired the sobriquet of The Theatrical Crimp. The
same office, in a higher walk, was fulfilled by several people.
Garrick had first heard the name of the ' woman Siddons '
from the Countess of Albany's cousin, Lord Bruce, in 1776
created Earl of Ailesbury. In 1774, the married adventurers,
William and Sarah Siddons, were acting at Cheltenham Wells,
during the water-drinking season, with Chamberlain and Crump's
company, of which Siddons appears to have been, at the time,
part Manager. Their appointments were, in all probability,
extremely humble. When that extraordinary creature, ' Becky '
Wells, played a star engagement at Cheltenham, in 1789, she
descanted on the contrast between that and her former
theatrical visit there; then, she had arrayed herself for Juliet
in an actresses' dressing-room only divided from the actors' by
a torn blanket.
One evening, Lord Bruce and his stepdaughter, the Hon.
Henrietta Boyle, turned in to the Cheltenham Theatre in a
mood of indulgent good humour. The play was Otway's
FALSE DAWN 19
Venice Preserved, and the well-versed pair expected, at best,
to enjoy a suppressed smile out of the antics and mouthings
of the poor creatures behind the floats. They proved them-
selves unprejudiced enough to acknowledge a good thing when
they found it. Indeed, Miss Boyle cried so hard over the pathos
and tenderness of one young tragedienne, Siddons by name, that
the sound of her sobs convinced that sensitive actress she was
being tittered at, and sent her home in an agony of vexation.
Next morning, Lord Bruce, walking in Cheltenham, met
William Siddons. He bowed to the actor, and then accosted
him, actors being public property, with a few well-chosen words
of compliment — and what words of compliment from a noble
lord would have seemed other than well-chosen? — on Mrs.
Siddons's beautiful acting, after which he begged for his
daughter the pleasure of waiting on Mrs. Siddons at her
lodgings. Quick and self-reliant, Miss Boyle at once discovered
that, under the shabby surroundings of this obscure premiere,
she had lighted upon a lady in grain.' The two made friends.
Mrs. Siddons — I quote a serious work on the girlhood of
extraordinary women, published in 1857 — "was naturally
greatly lifted up by the praise of honourable and noble persons,
whose rank was a sure guarantee of the soundness of their
judgment." Miss Boyle lent Mrs. Siddons finery, imparted the
latest ideas on chiffons, herself ran together stage-costume
adornments. When next in London, Lord Bruce took an
opportunity of naming their Cheltenham Belvidera to Garrick,
as a diamond in a dust-heap, a dove trooping with crows. We
know enough of him whom friends called the great little man,
and enemies the little great man, to be sure that the fact that
she had been recommended by a peer engraved all the more
deeply the new name of Siddons in Garrick's mental notebook.
As a newspaper correspondent phrases it, writing, in 1823, to
the editor of the Courier, " The late Earl of Aylesbury excited
Garrick's earnest attention."
For all his charming deference to aristocratic acquaintances,
our David was not the man to rely for a final artistic opinion,
involving his subsequent cash and credit, on any one but him-
self, or another stage expert. As a matter of fact, and without
counting Moody, referred to above, he employed two experts
20 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
on the Siddons quest. One was Tom King, who saw her, at
Cheltenham, as Calista, in Rowe's The Fair Penitent, and re-
ported enthusiastically. The other was the Rev. Henry Bate,
who did not see her till some months later, when Garrick was
sighing for a new sultana to correct the caprices of Mesdames
Abington, Yates, and Younge.
Parson Bate, J.P., M.F.H., who edited the Morning Post, and
was, as the ever delightful Boaden remarks, ' lay in his manners,'
has never been accused of lacking brains, and the two letters he
wrote to Garrick, on August 1 2th and ipth, 1775, from the Hop-
pole, Worcester, giving his impressions of Mrs. Siddons's extra-
ordinariness and Mr. Siddons's ordinariness, are much to the
point. He was accompanied on his quest by Mrs. Bate, ' whose
judgment in theatrical matters/ he writes, he has ' a high opinion
of/ This was the lady of whom Gainsborough made the
portrait (Lady Bate Dudley] which, lent by the late Lord Burton,
formed one of the greater glories of the British Fine Art Section
in the Franco-British Exhibition, 1908. Her husband's portrait,
by Gainsborough, hangs in Room XX of the National Gallery.
Bate tells Garrick that Mrs. Siddons — as Rosalind — was not
only beautiful and original (yet tempered by an unremitting re-
gard for the moderation of nature) but that ' in the latter humbug
scene with Orlando' she ' did more with it ' than any one he ever
saw, ' not even your divine Mrs. Barry excepted.' Truth compels
him to say he thought her voice dissonant, even grating ; he is,
at the same time, inclined to think this only an error of affecta-
tion, for he ' found it wear away as the business became more
interesting/ So conquered is the critic that he goes on, " I
should not wonder, from her ease, figure, and manner, if she
made the proudest she of either house tremble in genteel
comedy — nay, beware yourself, Great Little Man, for she plays
Hamlet to the satisfaction of the Worcestershire critics." He
adds that, as there must be no thought of not engaging her, he
has taken the initial steps, since he c learnt that some of the
Covent Garden Mohawks were intrenched near the place, and
intended carrying her by surprise.' He says that the couple
are eagerly ready to put themselves under Garrick's protection,
but that the lady 'declined proposing any terms, leaving it
entirely with you/ Bate winds up by apologising for having
FALSE DAWN 21
written, he supposes, 'a damned jargon of unintelligible stuff
in haste.'
Garrick's reply — which I have only seen in print, as a
newspaper cutting from an ancient number of the Courier —
is, for its writer's sake and its rarity, worth transcribing. I
omit two or three sentences, in which Roscius inquires, in
terms too unmuffled for modern eyes, concerning Mrs. Siddons's
approaching confinement (her first child, Henry, was now ten
months old), desiring to know at what date she will again be
1 fit for service.'
"HAMPTON, August 15, 1775
"DEAR BATE, — Ten thousand thanks for your very clear,
agreeable, and friendly letter : it pleased me much, and who-
ever calls it a jargon of unintelligible stuff, should be knocked
down if I were near him. I must desire you to secure the
lady, with my best compliments, and that she may depend
upon every reasonable encouragement in my power; at the
same time, you must intimate to the husband, that he must
be satisfied with the State of life in which it has pleased Heaven
to call her. . . . Should not you get some memorandum signed
by her and her husband, and of which I will send a fac-simile
copy to them, and a frank, if you will let me know their address.
" I laughed at the military stratagems of the Covent Garden
Generals, whilst I had your genius to [ ? ] them. If she has
merit (as I am sure by your letter she must have) and will
be wholly governed by me, I will make her theatrical fortune ;
if any lady begins to play tricks, I will immediately play off
my masked battery of Siddons against her. I should be glad
to know her cast of parts, or rather what parts she has done,
and in what she likes herself best. Those I would have
marked . . .
" I am, my dear Farmer,1 most sincerely yours,
"D. GARRICK"
Four days later, Bate sent Garrick a list of Mrs. Siddons's
twenty-three leading characters. Of the seven she herself
preferred, three were tragic, and four comic. Among the
latter were Portia and Rosalind. She did not mark her two
tragic Shakespearean parts, Juliet and Cordelia. Bate added,
" It would be unjust not to remark one circumstance in favour
of them both ; I mean the universal good character they have
1 In reference to Bate's agricultural proclivities.
22 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
preserved here." In a postscript, he subjoins, " She is the most
extraordinary quick study I ever heard of."
The negotiations went forward. The Siddonses gave
notice at their headquarters. Garrick advanced money to
tide them over the forthcoming illness and any short period
in London before appearance.
None of the Garrick-Bate letters appear in The Private
Correspondence of David Garrick, edited by Boaden in 1831.
The only document bearing on the transaction to be found
there is a letter to William Siddons, dated December I3th,
1775, from John de la Bere, reporting to him the indignation
of ' Mr. Blackwell ' and ' the gentlemen of Covent-garden
theatre' at Mrs. Siddons's having engaged herself to Garrick
after having been previously in treaty with them for the
latter part of the winter season. " They consider her subse-
quent engagement to Mr. Garrick as an infringement of the
agreement subsisting between them and Drury-lane." From
this it would appear that some sort of stipulation existed
between the two * Winter Theatres ' (i.e. Drury Lane and
Covent Garden) as to not infringing on each other's overtures
to actors while such overtures were proceeding. The letter
concludes : " I have only to recommend it to your consideration,
whether you will not, on the footing of the agreement between
the two houses, lose the chance of getting into either, and to
add that Mr. Blackwell has taken up this affair with great
resolution, on the part of Covent-garden, and he says that
Mrs. Siddons absolutely promised him to drop all thoughts
of connecting herself with Drury-lane." Clearly, Mrs.
Siddons's acting had made a sensation, and, equally clearly,
the Siddons pair had not been guiltless of sitting on the
fence between the Lane and the Garden.
It had been calculated that Mrs. Siddons would be ' fit for
service' early in December, and, on November 9th, her
husband acquainted their prospective employer that, on the
5th inst., she had 'produc'd him a fine girl.' The twenty-year-
old wage-earner was taken ill while acting, at Gloucester, a
few hours previously. Had a longer reposeful time followed,
the story of her first siege of London might possibly have
been other than it was.
FALSE DAWN 23
The two probationers, accompanied by two babies ' off their
feet/ little Henry and the * fine girl/ Sarah Martha — later, the
' Sally ' Siddons of a tragic real-life story — reached London
before the middle of December. Mrs. Siddons felt she was
on the first rung of the ladder. The agreement was informal,
but Garrick promised her five pounds a week, a salary which,
before she began to draw it, must have appeared to her a
Golconda. Unfortunately, more than a third of the season
was over.
Boaden tells a weak-kneed story to the effect that, prior
to her marriage, she had journeyed to London, and recited
to Garrick from Rowe's tragedy, Jane Shore. This statement
is uncorroborated, and, as to date, improbable. Quite possibly,
now, on her enrolment in his corps, the patentee, at their
initial meeting, asked for a taste of her quality, and was given
some speeches of Jane Shore's or Alicia's. It would be hard
to imagine a prettier subject for a genre painting than the first
interview between Mrs. Siddons and Garrick.
" His praises were most liberally conferred upon me," wrote
Mrs. Siddons, long years afterwards, in the autograph Memoranda
she bequeathed to Campbell. It would not, one imagines, have
taken the oracle — as she called Garrick — many minutes to find
out various facts about her, besides the obvious one that she
was (in Johnson's phrase) towering in confidence of twenty-
one. Except electricity, nothing is more rapid than an
experienced actor's recognition of the professional standard.
Garrick selected for Mrs. Siddons's debut an important, if, to
a pathetic actress, not very grateful, Shakespearean part, Portia.
It was, at least, one that Bate had underlined at her request, a
strange fact, since there was no scope for passion in it. Later,
she herself realised the deficiency of the r61e — and grumbled at
Garrick for imposing it on her. There can be little doubt that,
before she came to London, and while she stayed in London,
she was accounted, and accounted herself, on the whole, a
comedy rather than a tragedy actress. King was her Shylock,
and Tom Davies's ' very pretty wife ' her Nerissa. The play was
given on a Friday, — December 29th, 1775 — anc* on the bill Mrs.
Siddons appeared as ' a Young Lady (being her first appearance)/
The poor girl was found wanting. She tottered and
24 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
trembled, and her voice could not get over the footlights.
Inadequacy seemed to stand confest. By the Trial scene, she
had somewhat rallied, but still her tones were so weak as often
to be inaudible — a defect that must have been fatal to the con-
fident, declamatory style playgoers associate with that special
1 bit of fat,' the Quality of Mercy speech. Next day, with the
exception of Bate, or his mouthpiece, in the Morning Post, the
critics, to a man, condemned her. Woodfall's paper, the Morn-
ing Chronicle, advised her ' to throw more fire and spirit into her
performance/ the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser found her,
on account of * monotony ' and of ' a vulgarity in her tones,' ill
calculated to ' sustain that line in a theatre she has at first been
held forth in.' The utmost praise of her acting to which her
part discoverer, Bate, ventured now to commit the Morning
Post was a vague opinion that ' her FORTE seems to be that of
enforcing the beauties of her author by an emphatic though easy
art, almost peculiar to herself.' Her painful timidity, the quality
of all others embarrassing to an audience assembled for enjoy-
ment, was dwelt on by all.
Had the ' Diurnal Writers' of 1775 appreciated the obstacles
against which the debutant laboured, one of them, perhaps,
might have thought her worth a word of encouragment. She
was in feeble health — a seven-weeks' mother. Except for what
natural genius had taught her, she was an unlessoned girl,
unschooled in the endless fine shades of those trained artists, the
socie'taires of Drury Lane. Lastly, she was already writhing
under the jealous disdain of the regnant queens of the green-
room. Who was this raw nobody ', that she should have a Shake-
spearean heroines part ? Poor, dear Mr. Garrick must be growing
reckless on the eve of his retirement — at any ratey extremely ill-
judged. And, oh la, what clothes ! For Portia, a faded, salmon-
coloured sacque and coat — salmon-coloured, forsooth, and obviously
second-hand. Did Mr. Bensley or Mr. Brereton murmur ' elegant
figure ' f Yes — well — it never would have occurred to them.
There was no brilliancy, no style, no je ne s^ais quoi — and each
fair one looked still more conscious as she contributed her self-
descriptive term. Indeed — and to drop a totally uninteresting
subject — the sooner the poor thing trundled back to her barns, the
better — they had no wish to detain her. Such was the attitude of
FALSE DAWN 25
sister-women. The aggrieved ladies called her ' Garrick's Venus,'
and on whichever noun they placed the accent, we may imagine
the title received additional sting.
She was ' Venus ' because, on her first night, and, again,
later, she walked in that character in the afterpiece, ' the Jubilee,'
a replica of the pageant arranged for Garrick's Shakespeare
Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769, and abandoned there,
on account of disastrous weather. As a revival, on the boards in
London, ( the Jubilee ' was a big success, in spite of the objections
made by the leading members of the company to demeaning
themselves by walking as the mere ' shadows ' of Shakespearean
characters that some of them had never even been associated
with. It was in the last scene of this revival that the c Ladies,
worthy creatures ! ' as William, better known as ' Gentleman,'
Smith ironically calls them in a letter to Garrick, tried to block
out Venus from the sight of the audience, while Garrick
(smilingly, we may be sure) frustrated their intentions by
deliberately leading her down to the front of the stage. Little
Tom Dibdin was Venus's Cupid, whom to keep of a cheerful
countenance Mrs. Siddons bribed with a promise of sugarplums
at the fall of the curtain. While Tom was away, not well
(whether from digestive upset consequent on the sugarplums is
not stated) a Master Mills personated Cupid. " I could have
killed that boy," says Dibdin. However, when he returned,
Mrs. Siddons comforted him by saying, " I did not like Master
Mills so well as I do you." The first words Dibdin heard Mrs.
Siddons utter, " Ma'am, could you favour me with a pin ? " were
addressed to Mrs. Garrick's maid, when one of Cupid's wings
dropped off
If Garrick had had no conviction that Mrs. Siddons possessed
the makings of a fine actress, why should he have continued to
risk the reputation of the theatre to whose welfare he had, for
twenty-nine years, scrupulously subordinated every personal
consideration by giving valuable parts to this novice who had
been so willing to come to him in all humbleness, without con-
tract of any kind ? Why did he not relegate her from the rank
occupied by Mrs. Yates, Miss Younge, and Miss Wrighten to
the below-the-salt position of Mrs. Davies and Miss Sherry and
Miss Hopkins, the prompter's daughter, all pretty women, but
26 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
negligible actresses, who " appeared and disappeared," as
Holcroft has it in his Theatrical Recorder •, " merely to fill up the
routine " ? Instead, and in spite of the unfavourable criticisms,
not only did he put her on for better work, viz. to act with
himself in his final performances of Richard III, as Lady Anne,
and of Hoadly's The Suspicious Husband, as Mrs. Strictland to
his Ranger, but, partly, no doubt, out of mischief and a
pardonable desire to punish the other ladies, he handed her, in
the greenroom, from her own seat to a chair next his own, he
paid her perhaps exaggerated respect, he gave her a place in the
boxes to see his farewell round of parts.
I like to think of the lessons Mrs. Siddons received, on her
off evenings, as she watched those versatile passages of byplay,
those surpassing soliloquies and ' side-speeches,' all that Diderot
called Garrick's ' singerie sublime' Siddons was a woman, and
Garrick a man, and his acting was, as far as any art can be,
realism, while hers was destined to bring in, or revive, on the
whole, an idealising method of representation, yet the very fact
of seeing the great actor so earnest in his art was in itself an
unforgetable education.
The whole sentiment of Drury Lane Theatre under Garrick
must have made a tremendous impression upon the young
actress, an impression bound, when leisure for the mind's
reaction came, to stimulate in her every kind of professional
ambition. After the rough-and-tumble, the paper wings, hoop
chandelier, and superannuated scenery, the half-understood
ignominy of strolling arrangements, she found herself on a
stage sentinelled by two of the King's soldiers, and before
a house so adroitly managed that, in Garrick's great scenes,
hush men were stationed in various parts of the auditorium,
to ' hist ' along the thrilling silence he required.
The lessons she received from ' the sovereign of the stage '
came not only by informal observation. He always took
infinite trouble over training his players. Kitty Clive bore
witness to this when she described him, ' with lamb-like
patience,' ' endeavouring to beat ' his ' ideas into the heads of
creatures who had none of their own.' In evidence, one of the
* creatures,' Edward Cape Everard, calling himself, on the title-
page of his book, * Pupil of the late David Garrick, Esq./ states
FALSE DAWN 27
that Garrick, reprimanding him after a rehearsal for his * boyish
blunder' of averring that he would play better on the night,
said, "If you cannot give a speech, or make love to a table,
chair, or marble, as well as to the finest woman in the world,
you are not, nor ever will be a great actor." Garrick gave
Mrs. Siddons definite suggestions towards improving her acting.
He told her, as Lady Anne, not to move her arm in the stiff,
exaggerated way she did, and that the management of her arms
constituted one of her early difficulties we are reminded in
Walpole's letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, dated
November 3rd, 1782, where he says, " Her action is proper, but
with little variety ; when without motion, her arms are not
genteel."
Unfortunately, Mrs. Siddons did not take this correction
well. She assigned to it the motive that Garrick could not bear
her to shade the tip of his nose — as she put it. This amounted
to saying that he would have vetoed any acting, however
transcendent, on her part, if, for an instant, it diverted attention
from Garrick — an idle charge. No great actor ever objected to
good byplay on a subordinate's part, for the simple reason that
all byplay that emphasises the scene is so much assistance to
himself. Mrs. Siddons gradually deluded herself into a fixed
idea — the readiest salve to wounded vanity — that her non-
success, at Drury Lane, in 1776, arose from the Manager's not
pushing her as he might have done had he not feared for his
own predominance.
Garrick certainly told her that if he gave her the best parts,
the other gentle creatures of the greenroom — to wit, Mrs. Yates
and Miss Younge — would poison her. It is noticeable that
Mrs. Abington, the comedy queen, was not named. She, most
likely, felt, throughout, that the Siddons never could be her
rival, and this may account for the fact, stated by Sheridan,
that when the next Management dismissed Mrs. Siddons,
Mrs. Abington alone called them fools. Garrick might truth-
fully have told his new ' Young Lady ' that, if he permitted her
to be Drury Lane's feminine mainstay on his own off nights,
the receipts would fall off considerably, in view of the continued
non-approbation of press and public. They did not think her
worth the trouble of a hiss. ' Lamentable ' was the unequivocal
28 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
word employed by the London Magazine for May, 1776, to
sum up her performance of Lady Anne.
Temperament and genius must always vary, but it is none
the less strange to contrast the slow, wavering rate at which
Mrs. Siddons's art developed with the art of Garrick, which,
sufficiently, at all events, for universal applause, ' reach'd
perfection in' its 'first essay/ when, on October ipth, 1741,
he played Richard III at Goodman's Fields. At the time
Mrs. Siddons came upon the ' D. L.' scene, Garrick, then within
six months of his last appearance there, was, both as an artist
and socially, in his full sunset glory. Everybody who was
anybody was caressing him, and fighting for places to see him
play.
Remembering Mrs. Siddons's disgust at what she called
1 the fulsome adulation that courted Garrick in the Theatre/ one
cannot contemplate the account she gave of her uncomfortable
relations with that distinguished man without a vivid suspicion
that one direction in which the young lady was lacking lay
in reluctance to pay compliments. If, during this winter season,
she had been something less of a Cordelia, if she had heaved
her heart (or words to that effect) into her mouth, and assured
Garrick that his Kitely was luminous, Miss Younge that her
Zara was divine, and ' Moll ' Yates (at. forty-eight) that the
whole audience took her for twenty-five, we might have traced,
in the record of 1776, a lubricant we miss.
Everything Garrick said or did was a grievance to Mrs.
Siddons in her overwrought condition, battling, as she thought
herself, for life, in a supreme current of fortune. It is more
remarkable that subsequent success never brought her its usual
accompaniment of placable after-judgment When John Taylor
repeated to her Sheridan's opinion of Garrick's Eichard III as
' very fine, but not terrible enough/ she exclaimed, ' Good God !
what could be more terrible ? ' and proceeded to tell him that,
ivhile rehearsing Lady Anne to Garrick's Richard, in the morning,
Garrick requested that when, at night, he led her from * the sofa/
she would follow him step by step, because he did a great deal
with his face, and wished not to turn it from the audience ; * but
[she went on] such was the terrific impression his acting produced
upon her, that she was much too absorbed to proceed, and obliged
By His M A J E S T Y 9* COMPANY,
At the Theatre Royal In Drury-Lane
This prefent MONDAY, May 27, .1776,
Will be preferred a TRAGEDY, call'd
KINGRlCHARDtheTHiRD.
King Richard by Mr. GAR RICK,
(Being his Firft Appearance in that Character thefe 4 Years).
Richmond by Mr. PALMER,
Buckingham by Mr. JEFFERSON,
Tre/Tel by Mr. D A V I E S,
Lord Stanley by Mr. B R A N S B Y,
Norfolk by Mr. H U R S T,
Catefby by Mr, PACKER,
Prince Edward by Mifs P. HOPKINS,
Duke of York Mafter PULLEY, Lord Mayor Mr GRIFFITHS,
Ratcliffe by Mr. WRIGHT, Lieutenant by Mr. FA.WCETT,
King Henry by Mr. REDDISH,
Lady Anne (Firft Time) Mrs. SIDDONS,
Butchers of York by Mrs. JOHNSTON,
Queen by Mrs. HOPKINS.
To which will be added
The DEVIL to PAY.
Sir John Loverule by Mr. V E R N O N,
Jobfon by Mr. MOOD Y,
Lady Loverule by Mrs. JOHNSTON,
Nell by Mrs. WR1GHTEN. "
Indies are Jefortt to fend (fair Servants a little after 5 to hep Places* fo prevent Covfufion.
The Doors will be opened at Half after FIVE o'CIock
To begin exactly at Half after SIX o'CIock. Vivant Rex & Regina.
To-morrow, (by particular Defjre) BRAGANZA, with Bon Ton, or High Life above Stair"
(Being the laft Time of performing thtm this Seafon.)
And Dancing by Mr. SLINGSBY and Signora PACINL
A PLAYBILL THAT COMBINES THE TWO GREATEST NAMES OF THE
ENGLISH STAGE
FALSE DAWN 29
him, therefore, to turn his back, on which he gave her such a
terrible frown, that she was always disturbed when she re-
collected it.'
Though Garrick was constitutionally unsympathetic to failure,
she could not charge him with any more unkind overt act than
that he once frowned at her to remind her she was being guilty
of a dereliction of obvious stage duty. Actresses on the defensive
are kittle cattle, and, at this juncture, I would not (to use Mr.
Shandy's phrase) give a cherrystone to choose between Clive,
the ' mixture of combustibles/ Gibber, the * greatest plague ' — be-
cause the most persistent — of Garrick's ladies, Abington, ' the
worst of bad women,' as, in his exasperation, he called her, and
our illustrious Sarah Siddons. When it comes to a blow to
their self-importance, they are all in a tale. Such is the toll the
profession of acting takes from feminine good sense.
Garrick's period of unweariable, well-organised work closed
on June loth, 1776, and that was the final night (already delayed
beyond the customary annual closing date) of the season for
which Mr. and Mrs. Siddons had been engaged. Mrs. Siddons's
last occasion of acting with Garrick was June 5th, when, for the
third time, she ' supported ' the character of Lady Anne to his
Richard. It was a royal command night.
Whatever Garrick might have done for our heroine in an
ensuing season had now to be undertaken, or let alone, by his
successors in Management, Willoughby Lacy, Sheridan, Linley,
and Ford. Years afterwards, when Garrick was safely dead,
Sheridan used to tell the tragic queen that the outgoing
Manager had made remarks adverse to her re-engagement.
This, coming whence it did, was, at least, doubtful, whereas it
should be noticed that a heedless public had made no sign to
justify new men in retaining her.
The most crushing sentence on her acting appeared when,
after she had played Julia, the girl's part, in Bate's The
Blackamoor Washed White, the Morning Chronicle of Friday,
February 2nd, observed of the preceding evening's cast, " All
played well, except Mrs. Siddons, who endeavoured to support
her character, but having no comedy in her nature, she rendered
that ridiculous which the author evidently designed to be
pleasant" Here was a tyro openly arraigned of 'having no
30 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
comedy in her nature,' yet Garrick had evidently thought her
less apt at tragedy, or he would not have given her a greater
number of comedy-young-lady parts. It is worth noticing,
as showing how the timid and impressible actress fluctuated,
that, in a separate paragraph of ' Theatrical Intelligence/ in the
Saturday's Morning Chronicle, we may read, " Mrs. Siddons
yesterday evening played Julia much better than on Thursday."
Mrs. Siddons and her husband confidently expected re-
engagement. Garrick had promised — no doubt, in his 'hey,
why now — yes, now, really, I think — Mrs. Garrick is waiting '
way — to do his best to pass them on, and they themselves saw
no commercial nor artistic reason for their being passed over.
They were playing a summer engagement in Birmingham when
the sword fell in the shape of a formal letter from the Drury
Lane prompter, W. Hopkins (whose daughter John Kemble
was, in 1787, to marry), to tell them that their services would
not be required the following season.
Mortification made Mrs. Siddons ill. " For a year and a
half I was supposed to be hastening to a decline." The castles
in Spain had toppled down, and she was bound in miseries —
free to make what provincial engagements she could. Her
ever-smouldering rancour is eloquent in this sentence she penned
in old age — " For the sake of my poor children I roused myself
to shake off this despondency, and my endeavours were blest
with success, in spite of the degradation I had suffered in being
banished from Drury Lane as a worthless candidate for fame
and fortune." That terrible sense of frustration which drives a
weak soul into inactivity drove Mrs. Siddons into increased
seriousness and harder work. She resolved ' to shake off this
despondency.' Steadiness of pursuit is the ruling character-
istic of strong natures. " The time will come when you will
hear me."
Ill
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE
FOR two years and a quarter, between the date when Drury
Lane gave Mrs. Siddons her congt and the date when
she became attached to the Bath Theatre, she and her
husband were connected with various provincial stock companies.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1776, they were at
Birmingham and Liverpool, under the Management of Yates
and Joseph Younger.
The gallery of the new theatre in New Street, Birmingham,
echoed the London verdict on the weakness of Mrs. Siddons's
voice. "She motions nicely, but she can't shout out loud,"
declared a spokesman of the Birmingham gods. From them,
and still under Younger's Management, she passed on to
Manchester, where, as at Liverpool, Hamlet was one of her
applauded efforts. Though she did not achieve a new Hamlet
— what can a woman's Hamlet ever be but a tour de force! —
the character appealed to her intellectual seriousness, and we
may believe that, in her hands, Shakespeare's type of ironic
genius suffered no further wrong than that of being arrayed
in ' a shawl-like garment.' Mrs. Siddons and her husband had
ceased to be the literal vagabonds of heretofore. They were
engaged, for considerable periods, in stock companies of high
respectability.
In Liverpool commenced the lifelong friendliness that
existed between Mrs. Siddons and a woman of almost equal
force of character, Elizabeth Inchbald, then still an actress.
In Manchester, whither the two ladies and their husbands
moved for the winter season, John Kemble, aged nineteen,
became a member of the company. Boaden, in his Memoirs of
Mrs. Inchbald, tells us that, in March 1777, the five players,
31
32 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
with two congenial men added, took a blameless Wilhelm
Meister holiday, in lodgings, on Russell Moor, near Appledur-
combe. In the mornings, Mrs. Siddons washed and ironed
for her husband and children, singing as she worked. In the
afternoons, the whole party went on the moor, and played
blindman's buff and puss in the corner. In the evenings, the
grown-ups sat down to cards, and, sometimes, Mrs. Siddons and
Kemble obliged with duets.
A harsh, but clever, pastiche of Mrs. Siddons, at about this
date, occurs in Lady Bell> by ' Sarah Tytler,' where the heroine
discovers the actress seated in an inn kitchen, " and occupied,
between the intervals of feeding the child, in supping heartily
from a basin of bread and milk."
In Manchester, Mrs. Siddons had not been far from the
circuit presided over by the enterprising Tate Wilkinson. He
beckoned, and the villeggiatura on Russell Moor broke up early
in April to allow her to enter upon a short, but triumphant,
visit to York, where she carried all before her, both in tragedy
and comedy, put a Miss Glassington completely in the shade,
and caused a Mrs. Hudson to quarrel with the Manager to the
point of leaving him. Mrs. Siddons even succeeded in melting
the prejudices of a certain Mr. Cornelius Swan, York's self-
constituted dramatic arbiter, and a very exacting censor indeed.
It is easy to write of any one who came in contact with
that zestful anecdotist, Tate Wilkinson. Better (for biographical
purposes) a month in the Ridings than a year with Younger, or
any other less garrulous Manager.
Wilkinson was all over notes of admiration. Never had any
previous actress so rapidly subjugated his theatre in Blake
Street. Mrs. Siddons was ' a lamp not to be extinguished/ a
lamp kept going by ' unquenchable flame of soul.' He recorded
that his patrons, one and all, expressed their ' astonishment,
that such a face, judgment, etc., could have been neglected by
the London audience, and by the first actor in the world.' Tate
never missed an opportunity of getting his little pocket-knife
into his old benefactor, Garrick tyrannos. He and his wife had
the visiting actress's almost constant company at their house,
and, across a pinch of 'his most excellent Irish snuff' (for
Tragedy's divinest daughter loved ' snuffing ') Mrs. Siddons told
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 33
him — to his high satisfaction — that she liked her 'country
excursions, and the civilities she met with so well, and thought
her treatment in London so cruel and unjust, she never wished
to play there again.'
According to provincial usage, the Management provided
the theatrical dresses, and Tate, who vaunted himself in this
department as ' the tippy,' tried to bribe Mrs. Siddons to return
to York, after the recess, as a resident, by promises of silks and
fine array exceeding anything Mr. Younger's wardrobe could
offer. There was, in particular, a silver-trimmed 'full sack,'
with a large hoop, provided for her Lady Alton (in The English
Merchant, by George Colman the elder), for though she herself was
shortly to become one of the earliest anti-hoop ladies, Tate, for
his part, c was partial to ' whalebone on the stage, sharing Queen
Charlotte's opinion that a hoop gave consequence. Over the
confection with the foil trimmings Mrs. Siddons 'enthused.'
She said, in her large-eyed, innocent way, that she wished she
could convey it elsewhere with her — ' it made her feel so happy.'
At York, she opened with Murphy's Grecian Daughter, and,
says Tate, " I had the honour of being her old father." He
especially comments on her extraordinary elegance, and on the
picturesqueness of her attitudes whenever she had to fall or die
on the stage. Proportioned like the Milo Venus, she possessed
the indispensable requisites of elegance, a short torso and long
legs, longest from knee to ankle. She was still suffering from
the shock of her London dismissal, and every one at York
remarked how ill and pale she looked, and wondered how she
could get through her parts.
On May i/th, her month's engagement ended with the close
of the York theatrical season, and she returned to Manchester.
The next notice as to her movements comes from Mrs.
Inchbald's journal, as follows : —
" I rose at three in the morning, and left Manchester in a
post-chaise with Mrs. Siddons and her maid. The gentlemen
rode in the stage-coach. They breakfasted at Macclesfield ; after
which they proceeded on their journey to Birmingham; Mr.
Inchbald on horseback — Mr. Kemble was taken in to the chaise
by the ladies ; till very late in life he was an indifferent
horseman."
34 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
At Birmingham, in their usual style, the Siddons and
Inchbald groups lodged together. Sometimes, " Mr. Inchbald
painted in the apartment of Mrs. Siddons whose exertion had
given her a fit of illness," and, sometimes, Kemble read English
history aloud, Mrs. Inchbald making ' notes of the important
facts ' as he went on.
During that bleak summer when the conclusive intelligence
of failure in London reached her, Mrs. Siddons had some
opportunities, in Birmingham, of playing leading business with
the finest actor between Garrick and Kean, John Henderson,
who, by his premature death, made room for Kemble at the top
of the tree. Had Henderson not died at thirty-eight, Kemble,
it may be, would only be remembered to-day as the scholarly,
stagy brother of a histrionic genius.
Henderson was that exceptional being, a thought-inspiring
actor. Whether as Hamlet or Falstaff, he was equally masterly
and subtle. Kemble described his Shylock as 'the greatest
effort he ever witnessed on the stage,' and his lago must have
been one of the profoundest pieces of acting ever seen, so
completely did he exhibit, side by side with lago's villainy,
lago's almost superhuman art of concealing villainy from its
victims.
It was Henderson, at the time 'the Bath Roscius' (which
meant the Bath Garrick) of four golden seasons, who, discerning,
in 1776, Mrs. Siddons's genius, wrote off to his Manager, John
Palmer, the younger, of Bath, urging him to secure her. The
outcome was an engagement, which included wife and husband,
for the Orchard Street Theatre, the most distinguished theatre
in England outside London. If anything could alleviate the
former injuriousness of fortune, it was the fact of being engaged
for the brilliant city in the West.
There is a paucity of record as to how Mrs. Siddons
employed the time between her benefit at York, May I7th,
1777, and October 24th, 1778, when she commenced at Bath.
Had she been unfeminine enough to preserve and docket her
correspondence, as Garrick did his, information as to her where-
abouts during this period, as well as a hundred other details,
now missing, might enrich her biographers' pages. Garrick,
by the way, went so far in methodicalness as to keep a list
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 35
of all the people who had abused him. Mrs. Siddons, whose
habit it was to think of her enemies as the enemies of the
Lord, was less likely than her placable predecessor to need any
written list to remember them by.
During the summer of 1777, the future queen of the stage
was, as playbills for June 27th — September I5th prove, in
Liverpool. For part, at least, of the rest of the time inter-
vening between York and Bath, she was playing in Manchester.
In June 1778, she, her brother, and her husband were again
with Younger in Liverpool. Before the theatre there opened
for this latter season, the Liverpool people issued a manifesto
to the effect that it was no use for Younger to bring any
company to Liverpool that had not played before the King.
On the opening night, Mr. Siddons was sent on, before a
vociferating and bottle-throwing audience, bearing a board,
Marge enough to secure his person/ inscribed with Younger's
petition to be heard. The lordly assembly would, however,
hear nothing. Mrs. Siddons entered next P.S., and Mrs.
Kniveton O.P. — the former, for one, had fulfilled the required
condition of having acted before George — but nothing could
avail. Mrs. Kniveton did what Mrs. Siddons would have
scorned to do, i.e. fainted in front of the audience, at which
the wretches only laughed. They next brushed every lamp
out with their hats, jumped on the stage, took back their
money, and left the theatre. Kemble describes the riot in a
letter to Mrs. Inchbald at Leeds.
The valuable patent of the Bath Theatre was, in 1777,
held by as many-sided a man as the more famous earlier
Bathonian, * humble ' Allen. Stirring, persevering John Palmer
ran the Bath Theatre conjointly with the Bristol Theatre,
and it was while moving his company (which he did three
times a week) from Bath to Bristol, in the 'specials' he
retained for the purpose, that the idea of mail-coaches for
the postal service struck him. On August 2nd, 1784, the
first English mail-coaches were driven between London and
Bristol, under his auspices. In 1796, when Mayor of Bath,
and five years before he first Represented Bath in Parliament,
Palmer set on foot, and collected, a subscription of nearly a
million sterling, to aid Pitt in carrying on England's naval war.
36 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
The theatre which was to become Mrs. Siddons's first
House of Fame had, when she reached it, been, for ten years,
a Theatre Royal — the first theatre in England, outside London,
to obtain a patent. It had, quite recently, been enlarged
and ventilated, at an outlay of £1000. It is true that Mrs.
Siddons was, later, to speak of its bad construction as
responsible for the fears she and her friends felt, in 1782, as
to whether her voice would fill Drury Lane.
Palmer had a quick eye for merit, and, once a year, made
a tour round the principal country theatres, foraging for new
talent, and observing what other Managers were doing.
Diversely occupied as he was, he had to delegate actual
managerial work upon a sub-Manager, who was ' Acting ' and
'Stage' Manager in one. At Palmer's date, the prompter
and the box-office keeper were more important functionaries
than nowadays. Palmer's prompter, Floor, who saw Mrs.
Siddons act in Liverpool, was in part — by adding his recom-
mendations to Henderson's — instrumental in effecting her
Bath engagement.
The population of * Beautiful Bath/ including its visitors,
was, in 1778, about thirty thousand. We need ask for no
better image of Bath life than is given in The Rivals. Towards
the end of October — when Mrs. Siddons began to act — the
city was fast filling, for the winter season, with very genteel
families. 'And more expected every day,' as Lady Miller,
exactly a year later, wrote to Dr. Whalley, adding, 'Bath is
become very pleasant, there is good music, good fires, good
plays, cards, assemblies, etc.' By this time, King Nash had
long ceased to rule Bath and hold the alms basin at the Abbey.
He had done his work of abolishing coarse manners, — duelling,
white aprons, and top-boots, — and, since his death in 1761,
Bath had diligently taken in hand its own further refinement.
There, of all places, was to be found ' a really box-audience/
the most judicious in the kingdom. Theatrically considered,
Bath was a more select London. It was, also, the acknow-
ledged antechamber to London.
" Nature and Providence may have intended the place for
a resource from distemper and disquiet. Man has made it a
seat of racke and dissipation." So, at Prior Park, said
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 37
Smollett, then meditating medical practice at Bath, and,
indeed, the proportion of those who came for pleasure always
exceeded the health-seekers. While the latter were steaming
out their gout in the King's Bath, the former loitered in
* toy '-shops, absorbed vermicelli soup at Gill's, the eminent
cook's, and consulted the Bath Directory. The more elegant-
minded looked in, every day, some at Leake's, some at
Tennant's Library (those ' evergreen trees of diabolical know-
ledge'), where they could converse, with congenial spirits,
about pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the winter's dramatic
prospects.
Mrs. Siddons's first appearance, on October 24th, was
in comedy. She played Lady Townly. She was supported
by Dimond, since Henderson's departure, the Bath premier^
Blisset, and Edwin. Of these three, John Edwin, who died of
' taking too much refreshment ' — la maladie du siecle — at forty,
is the only one whose name survives. Mrs. Siddons's second
appearance was on October 27th, when she played Mrs.
Candour, a part in which her ' significant looks ' were praised
by Mrs. Thrale, who admitted her general inferiority in comedy,
Other leading ladies being in possession, Palmer, at first, only
asked Mrs. Siddons, as a general thing, to act on Thursdays,
the Bath Cotillon nights, when * every thing that could move '
(as Boaden rather strongly puts it) went to the Lower
Rooms.
We want no surer indication of the attractiveness of Mrs.
Siddons's acting than the fact that after she had been at work
a few Thursdays — long enough to be seen in tragedy — the
Dressed Balls began to thin, in favour of the theatre. Thomas
Sheridan — a past-master — was one of the earliest enthusiasts,
and she called him ' the father of my fortune and my fame.'
Very shortly, she became 'this justly admired daughter of
Melpomene,' and, next, ' this astonishing tragedian.' She was
soon ' of the family of the sure-cards,' as Boaden says of Mrs.
Inchbald as a playwright. She not only conquered the Cotillons,
but, before a frivolous audience, brought tragedies into vogue.
Gifted, beautiful, of unexceptionable manners and untarnished
reputation, attended by a personable, sedate husband, and still
in the May-morn of her youth, she was beset by invitations,
38 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
troops of friends, and other flattering evidences of success.
Compared with what she had received at Drury Lane, there
was certainly a substantial drop — from £5 to £3 a week — in her
salary. In a country theatre, even at Bath, £$ a week would
have been a ' star ' salary. Here, however, she had a promising
benefit to look to, which, when it came, proved beneficial to the
amount of £146. Added to her regular earnings, this sum
sufficed to free her from what Scott designates 'the ignoble
melancholy of pecuniary embarrassment.' Mrs. Siddons of the
Bath Theatre could not afford a maid to paper her curls, but
was able to keep a nurse-girl to help in looking after the
children, whose number the arrival of a second little daughter
(Maria), born in I779,1 increased to three.
Mrs. Siddons found the circumstances of her engagement
arduous from the fact that Palmer required his company to
double, not their parts, but their stage, with Bristol, whence
they had to return to Bath at two in the morning.
"After the rehearsal at Bath," she wrote in the autograph
Memoranda she bequeathed to Campbell, " and on a Monday
morning, I had to go and act at Bristol on the evening of the
same day; and reaching Bath again, after a drive of twelve
miles, I was obliged to represent some fatiguing part there on
the Tuesday evening."
From the artistic standpoint, the four years that now super-
vened are deeply interesting, for, during this period, Mrs.
Siddons was forming her art. These were her self-discovering
years, when the gathered energies of her nature were pressing
forward in one direction. Considerable success, according to
its wont, only came after long study and labour. Its star,
meanwhile, shone in her brain, and led her on.
Bath may fairly claim Mrs. Siddons as, dramatically, its
child. The glory to which she afterwards attained was largely
due to the assiduous application, varied practice, and critical
following for which the Orchard Street Theatre provided the
1 Campbell (i. 82) gives July ist as the date of Maria's birth. The Registers of
Bath Abbey, published (down to 1800) in the Harleian Society's Series, contain two
Siddons baptisms, as follows : " 1779- Feb. 24. Maria d. of William and Sarah
Siddons." "1781. Apr. 26. Frances Emilia d. of William and Sarah Siddons."
The latter child we must suppose to have been the daughter whom biographers
mention as having died very young.
MRS. SIDDONS
THIS SKETCH BY ROMNEY HUNG ON ONE WALL FOR NEARLY A HUNDRED YEARS
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 39
opportunities. A local permanent company of trained actors,
accustomed a s'emboiter, is the true nucleus of the much-talked-
of national theatre. To Mrs. Siddons Bath was, what Henderson
had found it, a c college/
The most valuable passage that occurs in the whole of the
autograph Memoranda left with Campbell registers an incident,
which, though historically belonging somewhat earlier, probably
to the time of the Cheltenham engagement, may well appear
here, as it evidences what artless preparations Mrs. Siddons,
in the beginning, had thought adequate for playing the part
that afterwards became her most towering intellectual triumph,
Lady Macbeth : —
" It was my custom to study my characters at night, when
all the domestic cares and business of the day were over. On
the night preceding that in which I was to appear in this part
for the first time, I shut myself up as usual, when all the family
were retired, and commenced my study of Lady Macbeth. As
the character is very short, I thought I should soon accomplish
it. Being then only twenty years of age, I believed that little
more was necessary than to get the words into my head, for
the necessity of discrimination, and the development of character,
at that time of my life, had scarcely entered into my imagina-
tion. But to proceed. I went on with tolerable composure, in
the silence of the night (a night I never can forget), till I came
to the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose to
a degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I
snatched up my candle, and hurried out of the room in a
paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling of
it, as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-
struck fancy like the movement of a spectre pursuing me. At
last I reached my chamber, where I found my husband fast
asleep. I clapt my candlestick down upon the table, with-
out the power of putting the candle out, and I threw myself
on my bed, without daring to stay even to take off my
clothes."
A more characteristic picture was never painted — first, the
amazing confidence of the young actress in her power of
memorising a great (though not a long) part within twenty-
four hours, then her unconscious witness to her typically
40 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
histrionic temperament in her record of the emotion of the part
so rapidly and completely dominating her nerves and imagina-
tion. Small wonder that out of such malleable stuff a match-
less artist was shaped. The test of an artist is quick feeling in
the hour of study.
The words with which the passage concludes should not be
omitted, since they reveal the Mrs. Siddons of, so to speak,
private clothes — that staid, businesslike, platitudinising, pike-
staff matron who kept house with the spirit of fire and dew.
Never was there another artist of foremost rank who showed
fewer traces of what is commonly understood as art's unfailing
accompaniment, The Artistic ' Temperament ' : —
" At peep of day I rose to resume my task ; but so little did
I know of my part when I appeared in it at night, that my
shame and confusion cured me of procrastinating my business
for the remainder of my life."
, Every record of a great player's methods is interesting,
especially at first-hand. The above description of how Mrs.
Siddons gave herself to Lady Macbeth's part is infinitely better
worth having than her barren statement about the ' labour ' of
acting at Bath and Bristol on alternate evenings. But nothing
is so rare as to find an actor or actress writing instructively
and to the point on the art of acting. It is the vice of players,
when they compile their memoirs, to descant on their friends,
their press notices, their tours, on anything and everything but
the real thing.
As we may believe from her own testimony, Mrs. Siddons's
ease in committing parts to memory was prodigious. She
possessed what Lord Rosebery has called the ' priceless gift of
concentration.' A fortnight of rehearsals sufficed her, at all
times, even for the biggest part. Far more than on rehearsals
she relied on private study. She kept her brain fertilised by
incessant consideration of her parts. She was one of the wise
persons who know that the secret of good work is to ' plod on,
and, still ' — by dint of ever deepening, ever renewed study —
1 keep the passion fresh.' When preparing a part, in ' the quick
forge and workinghouse of thought,' she never spoke her words
aloud, leaving for the rehearsals that magic awakening of her
already carefully meditated conceptions. She allowed, too, for
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 41
the stimulus of theatrical surroundings, and, after her second
debut in London, she used to tell the elder Sheridan, on whose
criticisms she, in a measure, depended, that he must first go
down with her to the theatre, ' where alone she could show him
exactly what she could do at night.'
One of the remarkable points about her acting in this, her
early period, was that it was entirely self-derived and original.
During her 1776 season, she had seen much of Mrs. Yates and
Miss Younge's playing, and had had opportunities, on her off
nights, to observe Mrs. Barry's methods at Covent Garden, but
she seems never to have been influenced, in the slightest degree,
for or against, by the way any other eminent actress had en-
visaged any classic part, played any scene, or uttered any
speech. She seems never to have known what it was to be
temporarily swept off her feet, as to her own individuality, by
the individuality of an older, maturer artist.
And, however little, during the opening, the comedy,
performances at Bath, her acting promised the strength and
execution it was to display in 1782, it was invariably well
imagined. In youth and age, on the spur of the moment or
deliberately, Mrs. Siddons, whenever she spoke of her own
practice of her art, spoke of it as solely indebted to her ob-
servation of nature. Her earliest remark of the kind — since it
belongs to the Bath period, and occurs in a letter to her Bath
friend, Dr. Whalley — should be quoted in this context : —
" I hope [she writes] with a fervency unusual upon such
occasions, that you will not be disappointed in your expecta-
tions of me to-night ; but sorry am I to say I have often
observed, that I have performed worst when I most ardently
wished to do better than ever. Strange perverseness ! And
this leads me to observe (as I believe I may have done before),
that those who act mechanically are sure to be in some sort
right, while we who trust to nature (if we do not happen to
be in the humour, which, however, Heaven be praised, seldom
happens) are dull as anything can be imagined, because we
cannot feign."
In one sense, all acting is feigning, but Mrs. Siddons meant
that what was requisite to ensure her best was her sincere, albeit
transient, identification of herself with her part — the soul and
42 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
essence of great acting — which nervousness or mental pre-
occupation inevitably impairs.
Her first Bath season closed on June 1st, 1779, and, before
it closed, it fell to her lot, on April 29th, to read, and on May 1st
to recite, Sheridan's * Monody on Garrick.' 1 On September 27th,
she commenced her second season with her, as yet, immature
Lady Macbeth, and, during the subsequent winter, ' Master and
Miss Siddons ' appeared on her benefit night as her (stage)
children in James Thomson's Edward and Eleanora. The
perfection of her intelligence in pathetic tragedy had by this
time securely established her position at Bath. Every touching
word came bettered from her mouth ; every sentiment of honour
and virtue was made real by the exquisite sensibility of her
utterance. Tom Davies, describing, in his Dramatic Miscellanies
(iii. 148), what she was in 1782, notices that "her modulation
of grief, in her plaintive pronunciation of the interjection, ' O ! ' is
sweetly moving and reaches to the heart." It perhaps occurs
to a latter-day person that to put so much into an ' O ' would
certainly require art peculiarly capable of lifting banality out
of recognition. For her part, Mrs. Siddons now said openly
that she wished never to leave these sympathetic Bath audiences.
It is to be noticed that William Siddons never took anything
better than a minor r61e in pieces in which his wife was the
heroine. When she was Jane Shore in Rowe's tragedy, he
played Derby (a part of five lines) ; when she appeared, for one
night only, as Hamlet (in Garrick and Lee's Shakespeare im-
proved) he was Guildenstern. There is but little recorded
observation as to how he supported the fourth-rate characters
assigned him, but it is to be feared he was hardly worth his
salary. He is stated to have been an exacting critic of other
people's acting, and a good coach to his wife. He " was some-
times very cross with her when she did not act to please him,"
deposed Mrs. Summers, who, at Bath, played confidante to
Mrs. Siddons in the tragedies. The Rev. Henry Bate, it may
be remembered, described Siddons to Garrick as 'a damned
rascally player, though seemingly a very civil fellow,' but, on
1 "I never yet was able to read that lovely Poem without weeping most
plenteously" — Mrs. Siddons to R. B. Sheridan. From an unpublished letter, in
Mr. J. H. Leigh's collection, dated March 8th, 1814.
MRS. SIDDONS OF THE BATH THEATRE 43
better acquaintance, retracted the condemnatory portion of his
criticism sufficiently to allow that Siddons's Young Marlow was
' far from despicable.' Years later, Mrs. Siddons spoke to
Whalley of her husband as a much better judge of the like-
liness of a MS. tragedy than herself.
IV
THE BATH CIRCLE
IN every watering-place, there are two distinct populations,
the visitors and the residents, and it is a curious fact that,
at Bath, as Mrs. Siddons knew it between 1778 and 1782,
the greater number of remembered names we meet in association
with hers belonged to the latter section. On the other hand,
among ' the flux of quality ' was to be found the foremost of
her admirers, in the shape of the most celebrated social queen
of the late eighteenth century, Georgiana, Duchess of Devon-
shire, Reynolds's mirthful Madonna. Wherever she went, the
Duchess spread the actress's fame. Indeed, after Mrs. Siddons
shone forth as the Tragic Muse of England, she liked to say that
she owed her translation from Bath to London to advance
advertisements on the part of the Duchess. As a matter of
fact, Henderson's recommendatory representations to the
Drury Lane Management had counted for a good deal
more.
That most likable personality, Thomas Gainsborough, had
ceased to make Bath his residence about two years before
Mrs. Siddons settled there. An alchemist in paint, he was
a man who loved every form of art, and, on the art of acting,
his remarks, in letters to his friend, Henderson, are extra-
ordinarily penetrative. When he painted Mrs. Siddons, in
what Macaulay called * the prime of her glorious beauty,' at the
age of twenty-nine, in the blue, striped gown, brown muff, and
black hat, she was, once more, a Londoner, and gave the
master sittings at Schomberg House. Though he found her —
like the Duchess of Devonshire — hard to paint, he, at all events,
succeeded in making his chef tf&uvre of cool colour the finest
normal, or untheatrical, portrait of an actress ever painted.
44
THE BATH CIRCLE 45
" Two years before the death of Mrs. Siddons," writes Mrs.
Jameson, " I remember seeing her when seated near this picture,
and, looking from one to the other, it was like her still at the
age of seventy."
The painter whose 'emotive' life-story afterwards became
so intimately interwoven with Mrs. Siddons's personal chronicle
was brought to live at Bath during the latter half of her four
years' residence there. In 1780, Thomas Lawrence was only
eleven, though, from his confidence and self-possession, he
might have been judged to be one-and-twenty. His father, who
retired from keeping the Bear Inn at Devizes when he began
to see money in his brilliant son, had once been an actor, and
ever after remained so addicted to the theatre that he came over
from Devizes once a week to pass an evening in the Bath green-
room. Certain of the fact that young Tom possessed genius
though uncertain as to its direction, Thomas Lawrence pere,
at first, believed he saw in him the makings of an actor, and
encouraged him to recite Shakespeare. Before long, the
prodigy's even greater skill in drawing made him think
differently, and, after two years on St. James's Parade, the
family hired Mrs. Graham's — late Mrs. Macaulay's — Alfred
House, Alfred Street, at £100 a year rent, took in a permanent
' P. G.' (Cumberland's sister, a Mrs. Alcock), and profited from
Tom's precocious ability. By the time the boy was twelve, he
had many sitters, among them Mrs. Siddons, of whom, during
her final Bath season, he, ' JE? 13 ', made — the first of his many
portraits — a crayon sketch (later, engraved, and largely pur-
chased) in her character of Euphrasia in The Grecian Daughter^
at the moment when she stabs the tyrant. Lawrence saw the
play in the Bath Theatre, and, although Mrs. Siddons sat to
him afterwards, the impassioned aspect of the original portrait
is due to its boy-painter's strong original impression in the
playhouse.
It is disappointing that Mrs. Siddons's lodgings in Bath
cannot be identified. Apparently, she and her husband were
domiciled, during their last season, ' at Mr. Telling's, on Horse
Street Parade.' l This, at all events, was the address given by
1 In the opinion of Mr. Sydney Sydenham of Bath, this was I Garrard Street
(now Somerset Street, Southgate Street).
46 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
her husband to the applicants for tickets for her concluding
benefit.
It is pleasant to fancy Mrs. Siddons, sometimes — what with
rehearsals and the children, not very often — carried in a chair
to the Pump Room (her then fine health needed no waters),
sometimes walking on her business about the Parades, looking,
as she ever did, with her goddess-like way of moving, taller than
she was, but in all places the cynosure of eyes, whether she was
seen curtseying to that urbane scholar, old Mr. * Pliny ' Melmoth,
or to Garrick's crony, Lord Camden, or passing the time of day
with a handsome father of thirteen children, Christopher Anstey,
of 5 Royal Crescent, also of Trumpington, Cambs, who, accord-
ing to another famous lady,1 never forgot he was the author of
a celebrated poem, The New Bath Guide> and was, for ever
after, * shily important ' (a discerning phrase !) in consequence.
Mrs. Siddons would have had the sense and coolness to keep
out of the way of that man of wrath, Philip Thicknesse, of
St. Catherine's Hermitage, Gillray's ' Lieut-governor Gall-
stone/ who was " perpetually imagining insult, and would sniff
an injury from afar." She could more agreeably occupy herself
in stopping to look at the classical ladies — so like herself — on
the plaques and vases in Josiah Wedgwood's branch establishment
in Westgate Buildings.
Foremost among the folk unknown to general history of
whom she saw most during her years at Bath, Thomas Sedgwick
Whalley, D.D., should be named. Dr. Whalley's father had
been Master of Peterhouse, and, when the son took orders, his
father's old friend, the Bishop of Ely, presented him to a fat
Lincolnshire living, with the typically eighteenth-century proviso
that he was not to reside on it, as the fen air was fatal to any but
natives. Whalley had no comfortless scruples, but settled down
at his winter house in Royal Crescent, and his country place,
first, Langford Court, near Bristol, and, afterwards, when that
was let, Mendip Lodge, his ' Alpine habitation,' just above it.
He continued to be an absentee rector for half a century. He
was instruit and mundane, and society was necessary to his
existence. He loved everything that was the reverse of obvious.
This secular cleric and his — and his wife's — ' dearest friend
1 Fanny Burney,
THE BATH CIRCLE 47
Mrs. Siddons' were on most effusive terms. In one of her
letters, she told him that she never went to bed without praying
for his and Mrs. Whalley's welfare, she wore their hair in a ring,
she addressed him as * your glorious self/ ' my best, my noblest
friend,' ' my most honoured.' These violent delights did not
have violent ends, for when, late in the twenties of last century,
her failing health forbade her writing, her daughter Cecilia
continued her correspondence with Dr. Whalley, who, after all,
predeceased her. When she was young, struggling, and at Bath,
the Whalleys used to keep up her strength with beaten * Tent
and egg' and offerings of grapes. In her palmy days, they
presented her with ' beauteous and magnificent sables ' which
she wore as a trimming on stage dresses.
In all Bath, there was no one more exquisite, in his very
cultured way, than Whalley. So susceptible to music that
a good military band set him off crying in floods, he exchanged
attenuated sentimentalities, wrapped in words of Latin origin,
with Anna Seward. Fanny Burney, a clearer-sighted muse,
made Philistine fun of his conversation, " about his ' feelings/
about amiable motives, and about the wind, which at the
Crescent, he said, in a tone of dying horror, * blew in a manner
really frightful.' " Mrs. Siddons was less awake to the absurd
side of affectation. The portion of the brain which enables
some persons to perceive incongruity was undeveloped in her
organisation — partly, because she was a tragic actress.
Besides being a minor poet, Whalley was, it need scarcely
be said, an art collector. Men of his stamp always are. It
was for him that ' Barker of Bath ' painted The Woodman.
Whalley, also, adored lap-dogs, and was painted by Reynolds
with his spoilt and ' bullying ' Blenheim, the ' Sappho/ better
known as ' Paphy/ or l Paphy Piddy/ to whose shell-pink ears
and pretty tyrannies a letter of Mrs. Siddons's, dated August 2Oth,
1782, rather oppressively refers.
Whalley married three times, and, each time, went where
money was. His first wife suffered a long while before her
death from spinal curvature, caused by a carriage accident.
The second Mrs. Whalley was a Wiltshire Heathcote. Al-
though possessed of ' a fortune of fourscore thousand pounds in
her own power/ she, being sixty, was enraptured at having the
48 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
handkerchief thrown to her, and expressed to her friends her
happiness in being united to a man 'whom she had always
admired beyond any of her acquaintances, and who brought her
a fortune equal to her own.' Within two years, the poor lady
died from a cold. The widower's third dip into the lucky
bag proved a failure. When nearly seventy, he espoused
Lieutenant-General Charles Horneck's widow. Instead of the
hoped-for fortune and good comradeship, she brought him
debts and incompatibility. They 'separated by mutual dis-
agreement,' and, while he lived in one house in Bath, she — on
a handsome settlement — inhabited another, where she gave
large parties. She was guilty of the further bad taste of
surviving him.
A topic, at first for laughter, and, later, for indignant
censure, between the Whalleys and Siddonses was that
hanger-on of the literary world, Samuel Jackson Pratt,
who adopted the pseudonym of ' Courtney Melmoth,' and
tried to climb upwards by addressing ingratiating letters to
strangers of distinction. "That Mr. Pratt gains character
and countenance at Bath, I wonder not on his part, but
I wonder on the world's," wrote, to Whalley, the Dean
of Bristol, Nineveh Layard's grandfather. Locally known as
' Pratty/ the aspirant thus stigmatised had been in the Church,
and on the stage, but, at the time he first swam into Mrs.
Siddons's ken, was keeping the old-established library at the
upper corner of Milsom Street. He was, in a hole-and-corner
way, a favourite among the dowagers with whom Bath, then,
as always, superabounded. "Pratt," said a caustic contem-
porary, "was a delightful man to women whom others had
disgusted, or injured, or neglected."
Pratt had ample inclination to write, but very moderate
talent. His tragedy, The Fair Circassian, which, produced at
Drury Lane on November 27th, 1781, owed everything to
Miss Farren, actually reached a nineteenth night. The gratified
author followed it up by a comedy, The School for Vanity, in
which, among other wild events, a baronet is saved from
drowning by an alderman. This piece, in spite of Miss Farren's
efforts, failed, and Pratt fell back on Delia Cruscan poems to
establish his immortality. He was, moreover, the author of
THE BATH CIRCLE 49
the lines that disgrace Garrick's tomb in Westminster
Abbey.
For a time, he imposed on the Whalleys and Mrs. Siddons,
also on the Swan of Lichfield, Anna Seward, who, when en-
lightenment came, was, for a Canon's daughter, almost un-
becomingly irate. From Mr. and Mrs. Siddons, in their halcyon
period, Pratt borrowed a considerable amount of money, and,
when Mrs. Siddons asked for a fraction of it back, and — a still
worse offence — told him it was her rule to read no one's MS.
tragedy, he turned vicious, threatened to write a poem on her,
entitled Gratitude, and said, among many flagrant things, that
he had been the ladder on which she had mounted to fame, and
was now kicking down. "What he means," commented Mrs.
Siddons, "I fancy he would be puzzled to explain." In
addition to his other meannesses, he had paid clandestine
addresses to Miss Kemble, afterwards Mrs. Twiss, under
Mrs. Siddons's roof.
Unremitting perseverance in study and practice, gradually,
during the Bath years, brought Mrs. Siddons's art to perfection.
From the start, as we learn from ' the reliable Genest,' she again
had, occasionally, the educational advantage of acting with
' Henderson from Drury Lane,' when he paid the original
discoverers of ' Mr. Courtney ' a theatrical visit. On November
1 7th, 1778, he played Hamlet, and she, the Queen on the ipth,
she was Portia to his Shylock. He extolled her to young
Sheridan, and she spoke of him, in her measured way, as * a fine
actor, with no great personal advantages indeed, but the soul of
intelligence.' As early as July I2th, 1780, as is attested by the
postscript of a letter from Sheridan to Joseph Cradock, the
Drury Lane Management was hoping to absorb Mrs. Siddons.
The postscript runs, " I am at present endeavouring to engage
Mrs. Siddons, of the Bath Theatre, which, if I effect, I will
inform you." This letter is the sole evidence I have come upon
that Sheridan contemplated the engagement of Mrs. Siddons
two years before he brought it off.
During the season of 1780-81, Mrs. Siddons introduced
her sister Frances to the public, as an actress. By her
own benefit that year ' Mr. Siddons ' (there was, then, no
Married Women's Property Act!) realised £124. During
4
50 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
1781-82, came the definitive summons to London. "It may
be imagined that this was to me a triumphant moment," said
Mrs. Siddons.
Bath audiences did not part from her willingly, and a news-
paper paragraph appeared, stating that Mr. Palmer was 'in
expectation of prevailing upon Mr. Sheridan to spare her a year
or more to us.' With the profits she had brought him, Palmer,
in 1781, made a good coachway up to his theatre, with a stand
capable of accommodating over fifty equipages. Quite recently,
no doubt by reason of her popularity, he had advanced the price
of the boxes by a shilling. Yet he did not offer her in time the
moderate rise that would — Boaden states — have retained her in
a place where she was happy. One wonders whether Lord
North's tax on theatres, then impending, had anything to do
with his hesitancy. "What a pity this man did not sooner
become sensible to Mrs. Siddons's value and his own interest!"
wrote, in a letter of the end of March, a Bath lady, related to
the Whalleys, Miss Penelope Sophia Weston, soon afterwards
the wife of William Pennington, the American Loyalist,
later, M.C. at 'the Bristol Hot Wells/ and Clifton's oddest
inhabitant.
This season, the prospering actress took two benefits at Bath,
and a third at Bristol, £146, £145, i8s., and £106, 133. At all
three, the pit was ' laid into ' boxes, and the front of the gallery
partitioned off, for 'the gentlemen of the pit.' A book was,
moreover, placed in the box-office, " for those ladies and gentle-
men to subscribe, who should wish to pay a compliment . . .
and might be absent from Bath at the time of the benefit."
This brought in twenty additional guineas at the first benefit.
On the playbills of the second and third, Mrs. Siddons announced
that she would produce, at the end of the evening, three reasons
for her leaving Bath. This sounded mysterious. The Distressed
Mother, Ambrose Philips's version of Racine's Andromaque, was
the play chosen. Dr. Whalley alone was in the secret. After
the curtain rose for the epilogue, Mrs. Siddons led forward
Harry, Sally, and Maria Siddons, the Three Reasons, and very
lovely and like Reynolds's ' Charity ' in the New College window,
she, no doubt, looked, with her beautiful children clinging to the
long folds of her gown.
THE BATH CIRCLE 51
The idea of the Three Reasons was developed at length in a
rhymed address, spoken and composed by this all-competent
matron : —
"... These are the moles that heave me from your side,
Where I was rooted — where I could have dy'd."
We may imagine how the theatre rang with applause, and
how every paterfamilias present wiped his eyes. All through
her career, Mrs. Siddons displayed an instinct for personal, and
not merely stage, publicity.
CONQUEST OF LONDON
r I ^HE year that shuddered at the disappearance of \heRoyal
George off ' the Fair Island/ in a waveless summer sea,
was the year that witnessed the long-deferred emergence
of England's greatest actress. In 1782, she was 'turned of
twenty-seven.
Early in 1783, Dr. Russell, historian of Europe, published,
under his initials, W. R., a poem concerning her, entitled The
Tragic Muse, in which he stated that —
"This bright Jewel from the Mine to bring,
Delightful task ! was left for generous King,"
but the assertion was only a figure of speech. It was not till
the season that saw Mrs. Siddons's Restoration that Sheridan
consigned Drury Lane's actual management to King, and then
he did so without giving that incomparable speaker of prologues
an iota of authority to engage players, or accept plays. Moved
by his father, by Henderson, and by Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire, it was Sheridan himself who had effected the
engagement of Mrs. Siddons.
In D. L. playbills for September 2Oth and 2ist, is to
be found, among ' notes/ at the foot, " Mrs. Siddons (From the
Theatre Royal, Bath) will shortly make her appearance at this
Theatre in a capital Character in Tragedy." On the playbill for
September 28th, and again for October 7th, the part she was
to play was specified.
On Thursday, October loth, 1782, she reappeared — and
sealed her triumph. Her probative part was Isabella, in
Garrick's version of the tragedy of that name Thomas Southerne
wrote, in 1694.
Perhaps none but actors can realise the tremors and earnest
CONQUEST OF LONDON 53
prayers which were the prelude to October loth. She was in
for her final, before the great examining board of London
playgoers, and there was much to intimidate, yet more to
stimulate, her in the thought. There was the stinging remem-
brance that, six years before, she had failed to satisfy these, or
similar, examiners, but, this time, she knew that her genius would
not be veiled and hampered by immaturity. Nothing was left
of that trembling Portia who was judged to be ' uncertain where-
abouts to fix either her eyes or her feet.'
At the rehearsals — she had only two — she created the right
sensation. At the first, she says, " The countenances, no less
than tears and flattering encouragements of my companions,
emboldened me more and more ; " at the second, " Mr. King
was loud in his applauses." Her eight-year-old son, Harry,
rehearsing the part of Isabella's child with her, unconsciously
helped forward the preliminary thrill, by breaking into sobs,
as he watched the dying scene, because he thought that, this
time, his mother was not acting, but really suffering, and really
about to leave him.1
When, on October 8th, Mrs. Siddons reached home after
her second rehearsal, she was seized, to her consternation,
with nervous hoarseness. Her own words, again from her
fragments ol autobiography, have more than once been
reprinted, but no paraphrase could represent the experience
of her next forty-eight hours with anything approaching
their tensity.
" I went to bed in a state of dreadful suspense. Awaking
the next morning, however, though out of restless, unrefreshing
sleep, I found, upon speaking to my husband, that my voice
was very much clearer. This, of course, was a great comfort
to me; and moreover, the sun, which had been completely
obscured for many days, shone brightly through my curtains.
I hailed it, though tearfully, yet thankfully, as a happy omen ;
and even now I am not ashamed of this (as it may, perhaps,
be called) childish superstition. On the morning of the loth
my voice was, most happily, perfectly restored ; and again
' the blessed sun shone brightly on me! "
Tom Welsh, the singing-master, father-in-law of Piatti,
1 The Morning Post, October loth, 1782.
54 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
told John Payne Collier, in 1832, at the Garrick Club, that
he had had it from Mrs. Siddons's own lips that she so
completely overslept herself, after her previous fatigue, and a
sleepless, anxious night, that, far from starting in time for a
final rehearsal fixed for 10 a.m., she lay on, unconscious — her
family having decided not to wake her — till one o'clock.
Her autobiographical Memoranda take up the story : —
" On this eventful day my father arrived to comfort me,
and to be a witness of my trial. He accompanied me to my
dressing-room at the theatre. There he left me; and I, in
one of what I call my desperate tranquillities, which usually
impress me under terrific circumstances, there completed my
dress, to the astonishment of my attendants, without uttering
one word, though often sighing most profoundly."
Though she told Lawrence that, up to her highest maturity,
she was shaken with nervousness before going on in a great
part, yet, true to her self-contained, reasonable nature, even the
nervousness common to all actors and actresses took, with her,
the form of * desperate tranquillities/ But, with her, nervous-
ness was done with as soon as the curtain rose. At that
moment, impersonation — what Salvini called transmigration —
took place, and, by a derivative, equally instantaneous, process,
the audience turned into the proverbial rows of cabbages.
"At length [continues her narrative of October loth]
I was called to my fiery trial. The awful consciousness that
one is the sole object of attention to that immense space,
lined, as it were, with human intellect from top to bottom
and all around, may, perhaps, be imagined, but can never be
described, and can never be forgotten."
Reading Isabella ; or The Fatal Marriage now, and comparing
it with other pieces in Mrs. Siddons's early repertory, one
cannot but rejoice that it actually is, like the child's drama
described by a schoolfellow, ' a little in the style of Shakespeare/
A simplicity, as of an age more golden than its own, resides
in some of the lines spoken by the heroine. The story is that
of a passionately devoted wife, who, believing herself a widow,
under stress of poverty remarries, for her child's sake, and finds
next day that her first husband is living. The situation caused
by his entrance is followed, on her part, by ' phrenzy's wild
CONQUEST OF LONDON 55
distracted glare' and a dagger used, with a laugh, against
herself.
Mrs. Siddons would have chosen the more ornate part
of Euphrasia, in The Grecian Daughter, but ' Mr. Sheridan,
senior/ knew that her strength lay in pathos, and persuaded
her into undertaking the character that would give her most
opportunity.
It is disconcerting to learn that, in obedience to our great-
grandfathers' crude views as to value for money, immediately
after sympathising with the anguish of Isabella, people were
supposed to be equally ready to participate in the humours
of the farce, which was William Whitehead's A Trip to Scotland.
In this direction, a change was at hand. By 1784, only two
years after Mrs. Siddons's uprisal, Tom Davies entered in his
Dramatic Miscellanies ', " The farces, which used to raise mirth
in an audience after a tragedy, now fail of that effect from
Mrs. Siddons's having so absolutely depressed the spirits of the
audience."
The new actress scored a magnificent success in Isabella
acting it eight times in the first three weeks, and sixteen times
more between November and the June of 1783. It evei
remained her favourite non-Shakespearean part with audiences.
It was one of those she most fully realised, for, with a few
exceptions, the characters in which she excelled were characters
in which the motherly side of feminine emotion predominated.
To her, the part of Juliet was not simpatica. Similarly, as
Boaden acutely observes, her Jane Shore was convincing as
to everything save as to the fact that Jane Shore had been
an adulteress.1 Her air of command, alone, visually banished
the notion of frailty, and in her own nature she had nothing
of the grande amoureuse.
The effect the restored debutante produced on her audience
was prodigious, and full-handed thunder greeted this apparition
of sensibility and power. To ancient Macklin, seated in the
front boxes, a mild gentleman remarked, " I think the new
actress promises well." " I think she performs well," snarled
the veteran. With every act, enthusiasm grew greater. At the
1 A similar remark was made, later, by Fanny Kemble concerning Mrs. Siddons's
Mrs. Haller.
56 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
close of the tragedy, as Boaden quaintly puts it (and we must
suppose he was recording an observed fact), " literally the greater
part of the spectators were too ill to use their hands in her
applause." When she got home, everything had to be recounted
to Mr. Siddons, who had been too agitated to venture to Drury
Lane.
Her account of how she finished this victorious evening is
a gem of narrative. All that was finest and most endearing in
her character breathes through its simple sentences : —
" I reached my own quiet fireside, on retiring from the scene
of reiterated shouts and plaudits. I was half dead ; and my
joy and thankfulness were of too solemn and overpowering a
nature to admit of words, or even tears. My father, my
husband, and myself sat down to a frugal neat supper in a
silence uninterrupted except by exclamations of gladness from
Mr. Siddons. My father enjoyed his refreshments, but occasion-
ally stopped short, and, laying down his knife and fork, lifting
up his venerable face, and throwing back his silver hair, gave
way to tears of happiness. We soon parted for the night ; and
I, worn out with continually broken rest and laborious exertion,
after an hour's retrospection, (who can conceive the intenseness
of that reverie?)1 fell into a sweet and profound sleep, which
lasted to the middle of the next day. I rose alert in mind and
body."
Out of the circle of Bath well-wishers Mrs. Siddons chose
Whalley to whom to unbosom her joy at the ringing success of
her great assault. " I never in my life heard such peals of
applause," she wrote to him, next day. " I thought they would
not have suffered Mr. Packer to end the play."
In conversation, late in her life, with C. R. Leslie's friend,
Newton, Mrs. Siddons said, emphatically, "/ was an honest
actress^ and at all times in all things endeavoured to do my best."
She, in part, owed her capacity for sustained hard work to her
fine physique. Hard work and plenty of stimulus were the
regime that best suited her. At Bath, when she was the mother
of young children, she would study till three in the morning,
after getting back from Bristol at midnight. Without literally
accepting Sir Joshua Reynolds's dictum that those determined
1 Query. Was this reflection Mrs. Siddons's, or Campbell's interpolation ?
CONQUEST OF LONDON 57
to excel must know no hours of dissipation — for a proportion
of every theatrical renomme'e is due to the judicious cultivation
of patrons during hours of so-called dissipation — she consistently
put work before family, society, and leisure. Except that
Macready locked himself into his theatre, and practised there
on Sundays, ' after morning service,' — a proceeding Mrs. Siddons
would have deprecated, — not even Macready, laborious though
he was, outdid her in application. " She certainly did not
spare herself. — Neither the great nor the vulgar can say that
Mrs. Siddons is not in downright earnest? remarks Davies, in
his Dramatic Miscellanies.
It was happy for her that she was blessed with a tenacious
verbal memory, for the quickly changing bills of her time
demanded powerful memory efforts. Henderson might well
write, as he did, in 1773, to his Bath employer, Palmer, "Let
me assure you, upon the credit of experience, that to keep over
fifty characters of great magnitude, importance and variety,
distinct and strong upon the mind and memory, is no trifling
business." No member of the Kemble family was ever known
to appeal to the prompter.
Mrs. Siddons's genius for impersonation was so potent that,
had she been, as Jules Janin found Rachel, 'petite, assez laide ;
une poitrine ^troite^ fair vulgaire et la parole trivialel she would
still have hypnotised audiences into believing that she looked
whatever each heroine was supposed to be looking. But, for
her further advantage, her physical equipment was so con-
summate that no victory of mind over matter was needed. She
was not much above the middle height, but, like many other
beautiful women, seemed taller than she was. In frame, some-
what large of bone, her grandeur of mien and the amplitude of
her gestures added to the impression, inseparable from one's
image of her, of a'goddess-like tallness. Mrs. Piozzi said that the
Earl of Errol, in his robes at George Ill's coronation, and Mrs.
Siddons, as Murphy's Euphrasia, were the noblest specimens of
the human race she ever saw.
Mrs. Siddons naturally found it more stimulating to play
in a large theatre, after the comparatively narrow Orchard
Street stage. She was the actress of all others fitted to a wide
proscenium. At later dates, it was remarked that on a small
58 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
provincial stage, her manner, winning its triumphs by broad
effects, her grandiose demeanour, and her sweeping movements
made her seem out of the picture. George Bartley, who played
Edward IV to her Margaret of Anjou, in 'I he Earl of Warwick,
described her, to Campbell, as looking a 'giantess/ when she
entered, at the back of the stage, through an ' extensive arch-
way/ which she ' really seemed to fill.'
Her beauty was of a type that wore well. When she was a
girl, a friend of her father's deplored two facts in her appear-
ance— that she was too thin, and that she was all eyes. To the
first defect she lived to look back with wistful remembrance ;
the second, also, ceased, as the contour of her face grew fuller
and rounder. To Whalley, she wrote of herself, after the
advent, at the end of 1785, of her younger son, George, as not
having been 'in face these last four months/ and Charles
Kemble told William Bodham Donne, the Examiner of Plays,
that, ' like all the Kembles/ she became ' very emaciated, not to
say scraggy/ while babies were following one another in quick
succession.
If the glory of her person will live for ever in the two
celebrated portraits, painted during the same year, the enskyed
Reynolds, and the superb, impassive Gainsborough (which I
once heard a visitor to the National Gallery designate ' Mrs.
Siddons as the Duchess of Devonshire '), the soft loveliness of
her face and bust is more realisable from two frost-fine chalk
drawings by Lawrence, one lithographed by Lane, the other
engraved by Nicholls, which have, comparatively recently, been
reproduced in Mr. Knapp's An Artist's Love Story. From these
intimate portraits by the man over whom the Kemble type
exercised nothing less than a spell, we see how much her
beauty consisted in the setting of her full-orbed eyes, the up-
ward curl of her dark and silky lashes, the shape of her chin
and forehead, the modelling of her deep bosom and nobly
muscular shoulder — for hers was a robust, not a fragile,
charm.
She possessed ' the Kemble Eye ' in its highest perfection.
Samuel Russell, an old actor, told Curling that those only who
were on the stage with her, playing their parts, could have any
idea of the power of her eye. " It made the person on whom it
CONQUEST OF LONDON 59
was levelled, almost blink and drop their own eyes." All
observers concur that, when she was acting, her eyes could be
seen to sparkle or glare at an incredible distance. " The effect
of her eyes," wrote the Rev. E. Mangin (author of Piozziana),
" was greatly assisted by a power she had of moving her eye-
brows, and the muscles of her forehead," and Genest says that,
at certain movements, on the stage, she had a look with her
eyes hardly possible to describe — " she seemed in a manner to
turn them in her head." These wonderful eyes were usually
described as black — " of the deepest black," said James Beattie,
but the great portrait-painters knew better. To them, they were
sepia-brown ; in repose, like heavy velvet.
Her face was ' seldom tinged with any colour, even in the
whirlwind of passion/ remarks John Wilson, and we gather
from the comment that she used little rouge when acting. As
regards her nose, Walpole did not find either it or her chin
according to the Greek standard, " beyond which both advance
a good deal," and every one remembers Gainsborough's baffled
ejaculation, as he threw down his brush, " Damn it, Madam,
there is no end to your nose ! " In every portrait alike, we
find 'the nose/ straight, and, for Aphrodite, a thought too
long, but betokening artistic capacity and decision of character.
It was the nose that made her profile what the Morning
Chronicle of October nth, 1782, termed it, 'grand, elegant and
striking.' We need only glance at the generalised portraits of
John Kemble which Lawrence exhibited, under 'character' names,
to know any one of them by Kemble's eagle beak. The Nose
ran — if the expression may be permitted — through the family.
A study of many portraits of Mrs. Siddons brings one to the
conclusion that her face, able and ready for expression, was not
too expressive in repose. It was plastic — the player's ideal face.
On her multitudinous portraits a volume might be written.
Besides the great Gainsborough,1 the great Reynolds, and the
favourite Lawrence, all reproduced in this volume, there is the
Warwick Castle full-length (in the Catalogue of the Guelph
Exhibition, 1891, ascribed to Reynolds) with the dagger and mask,
and Lord Llangattock's portrait of her, attributed to Gains-
1 Sold to the National Gallery, in 1862, by Major Mair, husband of the sitter's
granddaughter.
60 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
borough, in Cavalier costume, while, in a 'Catalogue of Lawrence's
Exhibited and Engraved Works/ appended to Lord Ronald
Gower's Sir Thomas Lawrence, Mr. Algernon Graves names no
fewer than fourteen several portraits of her. In 1783, Romney
made the sketch1 that faces p. 38, the finished replica of which
the Morning Chronicle, May 8th, 1786, called his "incomparable
head of Mrs. Siddons, which Raphael would be glad of, pene-
trated by something superior even to Taste ! "
After the work of the dii majores, the half-length by
J. Downman, A.R.A., in the beribboned cap and scalloped
fichu, stands, perhaps, first. It is well known from P. W.
Tomkins's engraving, reproductions of which were included in
the Magazine of Art, 1887 (' Some Portraits of Sarah Siddons ' ) ;
in the reprint, 1896, of Boaden; in The Two Duchesses, 1898 —
mistakenly, there, as Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire ; and in
Lord Howard de Walden's edition of The Reminiscences of Henry
Angelo, 1904. On the back of the painting is inscribed, in
Downman's handwriting, these words, kindly communicated
to me by the present owner : " Mrs. Siddons. 1787. Original,
the great tragic Actress. I drew this for the Duke of
Richmond, but he preferred the Duplicate. Off the Stage I
thought her face more inclined to the comic." Comparison of
this portrait with the Romney sketch induces conviction that
both were faithful likenesses. Sir William Beechey's interesting
figure, seated, in white, with white turban, painted about 1798,
an ever-attractive subject with copyists in the National Portrait
Gallery, comes next among private life portraits.
However positive we may feel that Mrs. Siddons was a
1 trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow,' the overwhelming
majority of her stage portraits depict her at the sensational
moments of non-Shakespearean drama. Harlow not only painted
the famous Katharine portrait, but made a pencil drawing of
her, dated 'December 1813,' as Lady Macbeth (only a few
reproductions of which were printed), but, besides this latter,
there is no record that can be called artistic of her highest
dramatic achievement.
Among five portraits (five, at least) of Mrs. Siddons,
1 Sold, in 1906, at Christie's, 'the property of a gentleman,' for 2500
guineas.
CONQUEST OF LONDON 61
by William Hamilton, of the four in character, as Isabella,
Euphrasia, Jane Shore, and Lady Randolph, the first, a large
canvas now in Lord Hotham's collection, is the most note-
worthy. Even in Caldwall's print, it fascinates — the woman-
hood is so heroic, the affliction so gorgeous — and this in
spite of Genest's criticism that " as she is simply standing with
the child in her hand," no "particular idea of her manner" is
conveyed. A propos, the following story is told of one of
Mrs. Siddons's sittings, in 1782, to the Scotch Academician, at
63 Dean Street. Hamilton and his wife, accompanying her, on
leaving, to the door, commented to her on her resemblance to
a sculptured Ariadne on the staircase. She clasped her hands
in ecstasy. "Yes, it is very" — she began, and was adding
" like," when a wave of modesty turned the word into " beautiful
— so very beautiful, I fear you must be flattering me." With
this, she sat on the stairs, gazing at the marble, and repeating,
" so beautiful, you must be flattering me."
In addition to the early Lawrence Euphrasia, and Hamilton's,
J. K. Sherwin (engraving as well as painting) and H. Repton
portrayed her in that character. Stothard drew her as Calista,
Shireff painted her both alone and with Kemble. In the Garrick
Club hangs an ultra-theatric full-length by Westall, the gift of
Sir Squire Bancroft. The Guelph Exhibition included, among
many portraits, miniatures by Cosway, Horace Hone, R.A.,
Samuel Shelley, G. Chinnery, R.H.A., and William Hamilton,
and a water-colour of her with her brothers by Sir W. T. Newton.
Romney introduced her, as ' Tragedy/ among the red shadows
of The Infant Shakspere instructed by the Passions, now at
Stratford : in another genre work, Lawrence's Satan, she
appears, at Satan's feet. W. Mansell had her as ' Queen Rant '
in ' The Caricaturers Stock in Trade 1786' ; Gillray's ' bludgeon-
pencil ' dealt with her in ' Blowing up the Pic Nic's,' and other
prints; Rowlandson expressed his notion of her, 'being in-
structed by her father/ Where she toured, there she sat to
some one, and, for wealthy admirers, like Mrs. Fitzhugh and
Lord Hardwicke, she sat to their favoured painters. It would
be hard to find a contemporary artist who never depicted Mrs.
Siddons. Lady Templetown cut her in paper, as Jane Shore, for
publication. Flaxman, designing chessmen, made the queens
62 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
from her. Mr. Fitzgerald speaks of an Irish collection of water-
colour drawings, by Miss Sackville Hamilton, of her poses and
costumes.
Where painters led, engravers followed. Bartolozzi, J. R.
Smith, Clint, Heath, Sherwin, Say, Caroline Watson, and a tribe
of others disseminated over Great Britain presentments of Mrs.
Siddons, c antique-limbed and stern,' with the face of a Fate on
a gem. ' Minstrel ' Beattie, being a Scot, thought her the most
beautiful woman of her time 'excepting the Duchess of Gordon/
but Stothard thought excepting Mrs. Fitzherbert. Stothard
said that commanding as Mrs. Siddons always was, in her
youth, as he found when painting her, the exceeding delicacy
of her beauty seemed far greater off the stage. On some one
observing that she would be the finest possible subject, not
for a picture, but a statue, and that a bust was not enough to
'convey a full idea of her surpassing majesty,' he cordially
assented, and mentioned the remark to Flaxman.
A notice of portraits should not omit mention of memorial
statues. Of Thomas Campbell's colossal figure (1846) — sub-
stituted for his intended mural alto-relievo, now in the National
Portrait Gallery — in Westminster Abbey, we read only too
much in Macready's Reminiscences. On Macready the trouble
and expense of its erection was allowed, by a distinguished and
aristocratic committee, almost entirely to fall. L. Chavalliaud's
statue (1897) on Paddington Green, minikin in scale — Mrs.
Siddons seen through the wrong end of an opera -glass —
has the distinction of being the only open-air statue of an
actress in England.
When we think of Mrs. Siddons's impressiveness, sureness,
strength, and fire, we dwell on characteristics other first-rate
women-actors have abundantly possessed, but the quality all
her own, the essence of her stage personality, was her innate
majesty, and, here, no other actress, however otherwise gifted,
has yet been her peer. "... were a wild Indian to ask me, What
was like a queen ? I would have bade him look at Mrs. Siddons "
— Tate Wilkinson's statement is convincing.
Mrs. Siddons, in her Memoranda, gives this ingenuous ex-
planation of her composure when she was first introduced at
Buckingham House: —
CONQUEST OF LONDON 63
" I afterwards learnt from one of the ladies who was present
at the time that her Majesty had expressed herself surprised
to find me so collected in so new a position, and that I had
conducted myself as if I had been used to a court. At any
rate, I had frequently personated queens."
As befitted a queen of tears, melancholy tenderness was, by all
accounts, the normal characteristic of Mrs. Siddons's voice, and her
prevailing stage expression was sad. A Rector of St. Stephen's,
Wallbrook, thus describes the impression she made on him : —
"... I never saw so mournful a countenance combined
with so much beauty. Her voice, though grand, was melancholy
— her air, though superb, was melancholy ; her very smile was
melancholy."1
Contemporary notices of how Mrs. Siddons dressed her
parts are few, partly, no doubt, because Tragedy takes less
thought for clothes than Comedy. Abington's fertile genius for
costume would have only belittled a Siddons. A probability
emerges that audiences were not certain what 'the Tragic
Music ' had on, beyond being convinced that she was
* clad in the usual weeds
Of high habitual state,'
as Joanna Baillie has it, in De Montfort, describing the heroine
(Mrs. Siddons). We know that the effect of Lady Macbeth's
sleep-walking dress was that of a soft, muffling whiteness, and
that it was designed by Sir Joshua. In the first two acts of
Macbeth^ Mrs. Siddons appeared in a costume copied from a
bridal suit of Mary, Queen of Scots, so, if the history was
anachronistic, the geography was unimpeachable. Seeing that
the antiquarian Kemble dressed all Shakespeare's historical
plays (as a step towards realism) in Charles I costumes, it was
he, most probably, who suggested to his sister the Mary Stuart
dress. Mrs. Siddons, by the way, was the first heroine who
dissociated madness from white satin.
It was upon her first appearance as Belvidera at Drury Lane
that Boaden made the following antediluvian comment : " There
was no Venetian costume affected, for in modern times it is not
1 Mars ton; or the Soldier and Statesman. By the Rev. George Croly, LL.D.,
i. 50, 51. 1846.
64 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
worth the inquiry for stage purposes how the different parts of
Europe dressed." In our days of an exact knowledge of reality,'
every one may have his laugh at Macbeth in a tie wig, and the
Grecian daughter in hoops. Should we not, rather, bring our
archaeological minds to bear on the wider aesthetic considerations
urged by Deschamps in that best poem on a picture ever
written before Rossetti's sonnets, a poem that may be roughly
Englished thus : —
When Veronese limned each sunburnt guest
At Cana's feast, he made no curious quest
In Galilee if silver threads or gold
Ran through the festal robe's embroidered fold,
Nor how were shaped those instruments divine
Which sang when God turned water into wine.
Yet the Venetian with his virile hand
Made living men of that musician band,
And, though for this or that the critics blame,
For me, I love the picture : 'tis the same
Whether they carry hautboy, viol, or lyre,
Their hands are flesh. I am silent. I admire.
George III, in his paternal way, warned Mrs. Siddons against
using white paint on her neck, as dangerous to health. When
Reynolds and Gainsborough painted her in 1784, she was still
under the dominion of what Elizabeth Inchbald uncompromis-
ingly called ' the larded meal.' The effect of the mounted head
was to make the face very small. At the same time, the natural
shape of the head was lost, winged out, as it was, by * certain
side-boxes of curls.' It described, instead, an equilateral triangle
of which the base was uppermost. The head-building process,
from the first papillotes to the last puff of the powder machine,
must have been painfully tedious, and busy Mrs. Siddons gained
many hours a week when, in November 1795, she broke through
the tyranny of powder, and, like her strong-minded friend,
Mrs. Inchbald, who was among the first innovators, tried the
effect 1 of natural hair on the stage.
In words only surpassed by Boaden's statement that
Henderson's Othello " agonised himself and everybody fortunate
1 Campbell states that, during her second season (1783-84), Mrs. Siddons went
unpowdered, and with hair already £ la grecque, and that Reynolds, thereupon,
' rapturously praised the round apple form which she had given to her head.' Judging
from portraits, Campbell antedated this speech. Reynolds did not die till 1792.
CONQUEST OF LONDON 65
enough to hear him," the Morning Chronicle, describing Mrs.
Siddons's first triumphal night in London, observed she " wore
her sorrows with so much persuasive sincerity " that she " wrung
the heart, and gratified the judgment." Such criticisms may
well bring us up anew against the naif wonder as to why people
should consider it a pastime to look on at the re-presentation of
' sorrows and agonies/
In view of the tears and screams, fainting-fits and convulsions,
that Mrs. Siddons's acting called forth, one must conclude that
the pleasure of seeing her act was a pleasure that was all but
pain. Miss Williams Wynn attests this, where, describing the
effect Mrs. Siddons's acting had upon her, she calls it a " thrill
which more exactly answers the idea vi pleasing pain than any-
thing I ever felt, and I can hardly attach any other meaning to
the words." Henry Angelo records, in his * Reminiscences/
how, one night, when he, with his family, was in Mrs. Lacy's
box to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella, a young lady, who had
been at the rehearsal in the morning, " determined to be before-
hand to have a good cry, and not all our laughing and persuasion
could prevent her shedding tears. The idea of what she must
expect from her affecting acting, was enough to produce weeping."
Genest states that the excruciating pathos of Mrs. Siddons's
Cleone, performed on November 22nd, 1786, so affected 'the
Ladies ' that, on the 24th, the evening announced for a repetition
of Dodsley's 'slaughter-house' tragedy, the boxes were half
deserted. The play, consequently, was, thenceforth, laid aside,
whereby " some admirers, who on the supposition that she would
play the character frequently, had not hurried about seeing her,
were greatly disappointed."
It was, clearly, Mrs. Siddons who brought in the fashion for v
the house to shriek whenever the heroine shrieked. The faint-
ing ladies and the ostentatious pocket-handkerchiefs also dated
from Mrs. Siddons's first season. These hysterical follies
'caught on/ and, very soon, people were 'swooning' on the
slightest theatrical provocation. It would be interesting to
know in which decade the fainting fashion declined. Fanny
Kemble, in her day, mentions having twice seen people seized
with epilepsy at the funeral procession in Romeo and Juliet.
Such physical paroxysms produced in, and willingly accepted
5
66 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
by, audiences as part of the enjoyment, form an extraordinary
phenomenon in the history of theatres. Regarding the reality
of these violent responses of the nervous system to violent
stimulus, there can, in many instances, be no question, and it
was not only in the case of innocent members of the public,
Gautier's 'public essentiellement serieux qui croit a ce quil voit'
that they were made, as witness the anecdote of Holman and
Macready's father, both hardened actors, sitting in the Drury
Lane pit while Mrs. Siddons played in The Grecian Daughter.
Any one who reads The Grecian Daughter to-day will scarce
forbear to yawn, yet, after the death-scene, Holman turned to
his companion, and said, " Macready, do I look as pale as you ? "
Hazlitt, when summarising Mrs. Siddons's artistic career,
recorded, " We have, many years ago, wept outright during the
whole time of her playing Isabella." Crabb Robinson was
another cool enough hand who yet became so hysterical when,
in 1797, Mrs. Siddons was playing Agnes, in Lillo's Fatal
Curiosity, that, he tells us, he was all but turned out, in the idea
that he was laughing by intention.
To be so excited, playgoers must be anything but ' barren
spectators/ and there can be little doubt that the audiences
of those days were keener than modern audiences. They
produced better critics of acting, for Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh
Hunt left no successors equally acute and analytic concerning
the acting, in contradistinction to the play.1 The whole house
was interested in ' readings ' and ' business.' Thanks to short
runs, and to the consequent frequent repetition of Shakespearean
and other masterpieces, every head in the auditorium could well
be, in Mr. Max Beerbohm's phrase, a heavy casket of
reminiscence.
As regarded the adequacy of the voice, found wanting by
Mrs. Siddons's critics of 1775-76, she and her friends had, before
the crucial October loth, many qualms, and, indeed, during her
first brilliant winter, though none could censure her articulation,
for she took care of every consonant, as her mother had taught
her, a few adverse opinions lingered. In all probability, before
she found the pitch of the house, sheer anxiety made her strain
1 Per contra, it must be remembered that Leigh Hunt's and Hazlitt's ' Theatrical
Examiners ' had not to go to press two hours after the fall of the curtain.
CONQUEST OF LONDON 67
her voice, since the Morning Post said that, in her purple
patches, she raised it harshly and inharmoniously.
Her propriety of utterance and correct emphasis were the
points specially commended by the King, which, at the end of
her opening season, procured her, by Queen Charlotte's express
command, the post of Reading Preceptress to the Princesses —
* a position/ wrote Campbell — in the draft of his Life of Mrs.
Siddons— '*\\ HONOUR, but no SALARY, and, therefore,
I believe, little in request.' 1 Certainly, Mrs. Siddons's appoint-
ment was honorary, but the Queen, on one occasion, gave her
' a magnificent gold chain, with a cross of many-coloured jewels/
— Mrs. Siddons called it her ' badge of honour/ — and, on another,
presented her with a nomination to the Charterhouse for her
elder son. The actress always had the honour of driving
to and from Buckingham House in a royal carriage.
We learn more of Mrs. Siddons's non-theatrical history,
during 1782-83, from the letters to Whalley, preserved in his
' Memoirs/ than from any other source. ' Pratty ' — or Benignus,
as the Bath set sometimes called Pratt — met with a considerable
share of comment. He began well, by writing Mrs. Siddons an
epilogue, which was, later, vastly applauded, though, on the first
night, it had to be dropped out of the programme, on account of
her ' excessive fatigue of mind and body ' — and by this fact
alone we may judge how she had gathered up all her force for
one supreme encounter. Her letter, unfortunately as far as
Pratt was concerned, went on, " Never, never, let me forget his
goodness to me." What ' Benignus ' must have considered a
golden opportunity for repaying his goodness arrived only too
soon, but Mrs. Siddons did no more than profess herself sadly
grieved over the fact that, after the predestinate failure of
Thomas Hull, the actor's, anonymously produced prose tragedy,
The Fatal Interview, the Management " would not let her " risk
her reputation in Pratt's comedy, The School for Vanity.
Though Walpole heard that ' the Siddons ' was declining
great dinners on the plea of her perpetual business and family
responsibilities, already the world was making its claims felt.
1 I came upon this comment in turning over the MS. rough copy of the Life oj
Mrs. Siddons, sold at Sotheby's, in 1906, for ^21. In his published work, the dis-
creet poet refined it away.
68 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
" I have thought myself very unfortunate," she writes to Whalley,
"in being unable to see her [Whalley 's niece] so often as
I wished ; but the constant succession of business, and the
nonsensical though necessary round of etiquette, visiting, etc.,
etc., leaves one in London very, very little to use for one's real
gratification."
In her prosperity and elation, she never lost sight of the quiet
ideals of her private character. Without a shade of insincerity,
she writes, " I am still gathering laurels to place round the sweet
cottage you and I have planned together, and you will be glad
to hear they are variegated with gold ; but as I am not ambitious
of finery, I shall be glad at a proper time ... to exchange them
for more modest plants." Another day, she exclaims, " Oh, for
a piece of Langford brown bread ! " Mrs Siddons was never
indifferent to food. She was an excellent ' fork.'
The 1782-83 letters to Whalley are dated from lodgings at
149 Strand. A central and tolerably respectable address was
essential to her receiving visits from people of any figure in the
world. At the theatre, the first run of Isabella was not over
before she was advanced from her original dressing-room, up a
long staircase, to the dressing-room that had been Garrick's.
Her salary commenced at ten guineas a week. Two years
later, it was raised to £24, los. Undoubtedly, during the first
season, her pay was below her value, but she looked to her
benefit, on December I4th, and that, made free, as it was, of all
charges, brought her over ;£8oo. Belvidera, in Venice Preserved,
was the part she chose for her first benefit, and when, in March
1783, a second was allowed her, she appeared before her patrons
as Zara, in Congreve's The Mourning Bride, and realised ^650
by the performance. As early as November 1782, a hundred
barristers, whom she described as ' the whole body of the Law/
made her up a purse of a hundred guineas, which the Hon.
Thomas Erskine presented, and she called the episode 'the
most shining circumstance of her whole life/ as, formerly, she
had said of a subscription raised for her in Bath, ' Was it not
elegant?' On December 1 7th, she issued, from the theatre, a
manifesto of gratitude, stating how she had been ' told that the
splendid appearance on the night [of her benefit] and the
emoluments arising from it, exceed anything ever recorded on
CONQUEST OF LONDON 69
a similar account in the annals of the English stage/ She
ended by protesting — as felicitously as such a thing could be
protested — that she ' will carefully guard against any approach
of pride.' To do her justice, she never, at any time, treated the
public in a high-handed way.
During her first season, which concluded on June 5th, she
acted eighty times, during her second, fifty-three times. The
first year she essayed seven characters, in the following order : —
Isabella (Southerne's Isabella ; or The Fatal Marriage, 1694).
Euphrasia (Murphy's Grecian Daughter ', 1772).
Jane Shore (Rowe's Jane Shore, 1713).
Louisa Montague (Hull's Fatal Interview, 1782).
Calista (Rowe's Fair Penitent, 1 703).
Belvidera (Otway's Venice Preserved, 1682).
Zara (Congreve's Mourning Bride, 1697).
In her Memoranda of 1782-83, occurs one specially under-
standable remark. Speaking of the overwhelming success, first,
of Isabella, then, of her next character, she writes, " I well
remember my fears and ready tears on each subsequent effort,
lest I should fall from my high exaltation."
Time is the trier of talent, and each new character Mrs.
Siddons impersonated more positively proved her Promethean
spark to be no penny firework. The glowing, graceful creature,
with her marvellously arresting manner and her terrible
concentration, recalling Mrs. Gibber in her pathos, rivalling
Garrick in all but his universality, " has," wrote Davies, " like a
resistless torrent . . borne down all before her."
VI
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS
INCERITY is the pulse of fine acting, and Mrs.
Siddons, one of the sincerest of feminine personal-
ities, possessed the quality at the heart of her genius.
Anna Seward found -that, she simply played as a woman of
fine understanding and feeling heart would actually look and
speak, in the given circumstances^Jand we may search long
through the superabundant correspondence of that pedantic
lady for another criticism as discerning and terse.
Mrs. Siddons played from nature, and her own conception,
for, of-ooMsse, her apprehension of ' nature ' was determined and
modified by temperament. Tkat ishe considered, seriously and
attentively, each line she uttered,vtier manuscript Memoranda
on Lady Macbeth, included in Campbell's 'Life' of her, afford
collateral assurance. Sir -Walter Scott tells us that, ^hen
dispraising her brother John's determinedly classic postures,
she showed, by practical exposition, that the braced attitude
induced by concentrated feeling can be, no matter how un-
beautiful, more expressive than the most elaborately graceful
pose plastique. She stood erect, pressed her knees closely against
each other, curved her feet inwards, held her elbows to her
sides, placed her hands upright together, and, in this attitude,
that of the Egyptian statues Lord Lansdowne had shown her
at Lansdowne House, she pronounced Lear's curse. The
heightened effect from the narrow, contracted body and the
rigidity of the muscles made Scott's ' hair rise and flesh creep/
It is interesting to find the English actress whose name we
intimately associatemith the classic, static, stately style giving
a lesson in realism a entrance. '•• We are reminded of Mme
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS 71
de StaeTs kindred comment, in Corinne, on the way Mrs.
Siddons played the scene in Isabella, where she kneels to Count
Baldwin : —
" Uactrice la plus noble dans ses manieres, madame Siddons,
ne perd rien de sa dignite quand elle se prosterne contre terre. II
riy a rien qui ne puisse etre admirable, quand une Emotion intime
£ entrained
Acting consists of two main ingredients, imitation and
artistic identification. A mere mimic catches manner and
mannerism, a true actor gives the mind with the manner. This
power of temporary identification was pre-eminently Mrs.
Siddons's. She worked from within outward ; first, by yielding
herself to the spontaneous flashes of her sensibility, she became
the person represented ; then, inevitably, brought out the
external indications, peculiar and personal.34
L- Other actors marvelled _at- the well-controlled, self-reserving
' identification ' they must have deeply envied. Charles Mayne
Young, who acted with Mrs. Siddons, gave, in a word, the
explanation of it. "She was," he said, "the most lofty-minded
actress I ever beheld. . . .i-From the first moment to the last, she
was, according to theatric parlance, ' in the character.' 'p Various
actors are so variously constituted that, while Mrs. Siddons
took deliberate pains to maintain, through the intervals between
the scenes, the frame of mind proper to the play, Edmund
Kean could come out of tragedy, and straightway turn a
somersault into the greenroom, and Rachel could parody the
thrilling scene she had that moment quitted. . It was not in
' the Great Woman,' as Campbell calls his heroine, to ' frivol,'
or coolly calculate, in the thick of tragedy. . One could not
imagine Garrick's whisper, " Tom, it will do — I see it in their
eyes," from her. The soul of the artist in Mrs. Siddons was
a deep lake, in Garrick it was a broad, transparent stream.
At the same time,,j|t was only while she was in the part
that she submerged her private self, and then, in Boaden's
quaint words, "no recognisance of the most noble of her
friends exchanged the character for the individual." Once
the fifth act was at an eni she, too, returned to herself, like
the rational being she was^and Cumberland, in conversation
with Rogers, drew a memory-picture of her coming off the
72 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
stage in the flush of triumph, and walking to the mirror in the
greenroom to survey her still agitated face.
\^ Whether speaking or silent, Mrs. Siddons acted, intensely,
every moment of the time she was before the audiencer.-x Crabb
Robinson describes her, as Margaret of Anjou, when she has
stabbed Warwick. "She . . . staggered off the stage as if drunk
with delight . . . every limb showed the tumult of passion." She
was never afraid to evince physical vigour. Genest noticed
that whereas less stalwart actresses, in Milwood (Lillo's George
Barnweir), let themselves be disarmed, almost without a struggle,
she rushed past Trueman, and made her way up to Thorowgood,
before Trueman could hold her back.
It is clear that her technique came easily to her. Her
genius had not, like Irving's, to chip a laborious way through
a sheath of personal inaptitudes.
Her special magic lay in bits of dumb show, neither set
down in the text nor in marginal directions. In the Trial, in
King Henry the Eighth, the way in which, as Queen Katharine,
she waved aside Cardinal Campeius, and more directly addressed
herself to Cardinal Wolsey, made the most memorable moment
of the scene. ... Similarly, Leigh Hunt noted as the best thing
in The Grecian Daughter a something out of it which occurred
when the heroine had obtained for her imprisoned father un-
expected assistance from the guard, Philotas. "Transported
with gratitude, but having nothing from the poet to give
expression to her feelings, she starts with extended arms and
casts herself in mute prostration at his feet." For action so
impulsive no one could imagine any rehearsal, and we read of
a feeling akin to consternation, on the part of the audience,
that such marvellous power in the expression of emotion should
be only acting.
The words of a dramatist do not supply an actor with much
more than half of what he expresses. He has to add to the
words colour, light and shade, life. Some people jeer at the
proposition that the actor creates. He no more creates a
character, say they, than a pianist creates Beethoven's Moonlight
Sonata. These people are, in a shallow sense, right. In a
profounder sense, they are quite wrong. To their contention
Fleeming Jenkin made the best possible reply, when he wrote : —
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS 73
" Let any reader who thinks that there is some one Hamlet,
Shakespeare's Hamlet, who could only speak the speech in one
attitude, with one set of tones — open the book, and in the
solitude of his chamber try first to find out the emotions which
Shakespeare meant his Hamlet to feel, and then try to express
those emotions in tones which would indicate them to others.
If honest and clever, he will find out after half an hour's study
how little the author has done for the actor, how much the
actor is called upon to do for the author." l
From a copy of Macbeth annotated with MS. marginalia,
I find Professor George Joseph Bell going still farther. " Mrs.
Siddons," he wrote, "is not before an audience. Her mind
wrought up in high conception of her part — her eyes never
wandering — never for a moment idle — passion and sentiment
continually betraying themselves. Her words are the accom-
paniments of her thoughts, scarcely necessary you would
imagine to the expression, but highly raising it and giving the
full force of poetical effect."
C Mrs. Siddons played without insisting overmuch upon her
own role. In any episode of strong action (like the duel between
Lothario and Altamont, in Rowe's Fair Penitent) where she
was not immediately concerned, she would efface herself. Her
capacity to evolve for every character its characteristic manners
totally preserved her work from that melancholy accompani-
ment of all but the best-imagined acting, inappropriate business.
Nor was she ever known to be trivial, or too detailed, in
conditions that demanded exaltation, and oblivion of small
surroundings. "3
" No trap, no lure for mean applause is laid ;
No start, no languish to the Pit is paid,"
wrote one of the many tributary poeticules, and to the extra-
ordinary single-mindedness of her acting those best qualified to
judge, viz. her fellow-actors, bore witness. Charles Young
sounded this noble characteristic when he said, "She never
indulged in imagination at the expense of truth." The word,
truth, seemed spontaneously to leap up whenever adequate
observers described her art. It fulfilled Plato's immortal
definition of beauty as the splendour of truth.
1 Papers, Literary, Scientific, etc., by Fleeming Jenkin, i. 46. 1887.
74 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Lady Charlotte Bury was told, in conversation, of how
John Brown, the painter, had asked Mrs. Siddons whether she
thought it necessary, in order to produce an effect on the
audience, that a part should be acted above the truth of nature.
Her reply — as it filtered through three reporters — was as follows :
" No, Sir, but undoubtedly up to nature in her highest colours ;
otherwise, except we performed to audiences composed of such
persons as I have now the honour to be conversing with, the
effect would not be bold enough in the boxes, nor even in the
pit. But to you, Sir, who are a painter, a judge of paintings, I
need not explain myself more particularly on this point."
Because her own personality was simple, Mrs. Siddons was
able to give to each of her impersonations an extraordinary
unity of design, and this we may take to have been the root
quality of every new triumph she made. The parts of the
character were subordinated to the whole, and every action and
gesture was related to one single mainspring of feeling. This
did not make for a variegated style, but it led, most emphatic-
ally, to intense and convincing effects.
We find a score of testimonies to a point which, after all,
counts for less than an unversed spectator might imagine, viz.
the copious tears shed by her. Shakespeare was too familiar
with the histrionic temperament to set much store by the fact
that the stroller in Hamlet wept, and turned pale, for Hecuba.
Tom Davies mentions that, in the critical act of The Fair
Penitent, Mrs. Siddons's increasing pallor was seen through her
rouge. Once, at least, in her fictive agitation, as Arpasia, in
Rowe's Tamerlane, she fainted in earnest, which caused * a rush
from the pit and boxes to enquire for her.' Miss Kelly, in the
dramatic 'Recollections' she gave, in 1833, at the Strand
Theatre, told how when Mrs. Siddons, as Constance, used to
weep over her (as Arthur) her collar was always wet with tear.s.
Mrs. Siddons was struck by her own facility for crying being
greater on some nights than on others. This appears from a
letter written by her, and first printed in Payne Collier's An Old
Marts Diary : —
" i Nw, 1805
" To speak sincerely, and as it were to myself, making my
own confession, I never played more to my own satisfaction
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS 75
than last night in Belvidera: if I may so say, it was hardly
acting, it seemed to me, and I believe to the audience, almost
reality ; and I can assure you that in one of my scenes with my
brother John, who was the Jaffier of the night (a part of which
he is not very fond), the real tears ' coursed one another down
my innocent nose' so abundantly that my handkerchief was
quite wet with them when I got off the stage. ... I never was
more applauded in Belvidera certainly ; though, of course, as a
piece of mere acting, it is not at all equal to my * Lady ' [Macbeth].
Belvidera, I assure you again, was hardly acting last night : I
felt every word as if I were the real person, and not the
representative."
As is the way with great actors, Mrs. Siddons, in almost
every part, gave special vitality to some one line, which stamped
it for ever, while, for the playgoer, all surrounding recollections
might have faded. Frederick Reynolds speaks of three separate
lines she made thrillingly impressive —
in Venice Preserved,
"Was it a miserable day?"
in The Mourning Bride,
"No — not the Princess' self,"
and, in King Henry the Eighth, the widely famed
" Lord cardinal, — *-\
To you I speak."
Mrs. Trench, the mother of the Archbishop of Dublin,
enthusiastically recorded the magical manner in which, in a
play whose title, plot, and characters were all forgotten, the
great actress said, to a servant who had betrayed her,
"There's gold for thee ; but see my face no more."
Some of these instances give an idea of the power Mrs.
Siddons must have possessed of vivifying what was in itself life-
less. The power of a true inflection of voice is incalculable, and
(as those blessed with oral memory best remember) all the
picturesque detail in the world does not move an audience like
one sentence, or one cry, given with the right intonation, ^^oo
r~ Another convincing proof of her grip over the house is the
witness we find to her, power of preventing the emergence of
;6 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
any chance ludicrous impression in tragedy. Of a scene in
Congreve's Zara, for instance, Tom Davies writes : —
" The expressions of anger and resentment, in the captive
queen, seldom fail to excite laughter. Mrs. Porter, who was
deservedly admired in Zara, and Mrs. Pritchard, her successor
in that part, could not, with all their skill, prevent the risibility
of the audience in this interview. Mrs. Siddons alone pre-
serves the dignity and truth of character, unmixed with any
incitement to mirth, from the countenance, expression, or
action."
We read that Clairon, when she advanced to the footlights,
could, by the blaze of her eyes, make the (then standing) pit
recoil several feet, but, certainly, no other English actress can
ever have had such a genius for sheer looking as Sarah Siddons.
The movements of her eyes anticipated her words, and made a
dramatic pause more speaking than the sentence that followed
it. No one ever knew better than she how to interpret the
silences of Shakespeare. *"-* -
Her artistic pauses of suspense and for the isolation of
weighty words were not identical with the more utilitarian pauses
she partly made, partly was given by the enthusiastic house, at
the end of crescendo efforts. Six years after she left Bath, she
asked Whalley, who had spent the greater part of the inter-
vening time on the Continent, whether he thought her acting
had improved in the interval. He replied in the affirmative,
but added (greatly daring) that he regretted to observe she
had acquired a stage trick of pausing after certain sentences,
to receive the expected applause. In London, throughout the
long sequence of years during which she was the idol of fashion,
she used definitely to rely upon these interruptions, for rest and
restoration. " Acting Isabella, for instance," said she, " out
of London, is double fatigue ; there the loud and long applause
at the great points and striking situations invigorated the
system, and the time it occupied recruited the health and
nerve."
In spite of Lady Macbeth, one cannot help imagining
that, in wicked characters, Mrs. Siddons must have suffered
(in the stage sense) from her own personality. It is hard to
believe that she was ever as criminal as Mme Bernhardt is
'•MRS. SIDDONS. TRAGIC ACTRESS. PAINTER UNKNOWN
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS 77
in Phedre. In Lady Macbeth, it is noteworthy that she
made —
" Had he not resembled
My father as he slept I had done 't,"
by the exquisite feeling she put into it, one of the great
points in the drama.
It is clear that the simplicity of Mrs. Siddons was different,
in kind, from that of the Garrick school. The question that
remains for the student of the historical stage is whether, to a
modern audience, her effects would not have appeared effects
of harsh, melodramatic brilliancy and gigantic, over-emphasised
shadow — though, after all that has been cited, the suspicion of
any unnaturalness seems a treason. We know that, in theatrical
appreciation, fashions change. As to the staginess of John
Kemble, condemned even by his contemporaries, there can
be no question. We know, moreover, that the family ideal
was classic, and a reaction from the flexible impressionism
of Garrick and his followers. In her Record of a Girlhood^
Mrs. Kemble states what the family ideal was —
"... A noble ideal beauty was what we were taught to
consider the proper object and result of all art. In their
especial vocation this tendency caused my family to be
accused of formalism and artificial pedantry ; and the so-
called ' classical ' school of acting, to which they belonged,
has frequently since their time been unfavourably compared
with what, by way of contrast, has been termed the realistic
or natural style of art."
In Mrs. Siddons's own day there was a minority who
dissented from the general laudations of her naturalness. One
who belonged to this minority was Abraham Hayward's ' Lady
of Quality,' Miss Wynn. She wrote : —
" Mrs. Siddons in her prime is certainly a bright recollection,
but I did not feel for her acting quite the enthusiasm that
most people profess. It was too artificial for my taste: her
attitudes were fine and graceful, but they always seemed to
me the result of study."
Such criticisms as this must be taken into consideration.
On the other hand, we may remember Mrs. Clive's ringing
verdict that her acting was ' all truth and daylight/ a judgment
78 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
particularly weighty, as proceeding from a woman of strong
understanding, who had herself been a princess among the
impressionists. We have to separate the ranting contemporary
tragedies in which Mrs. Siddons played from herself and her
method of playing them. We may also bear in mind that the
too familiar anecdotes of her stilted phraseology in everyday
life are not proofs of her having been stagy in the theatre.
The balance of probability inclines one to think that the
greatness of her imagination irradiated a conception and
method which, in the hands of a player endowed merely with
talent, would have lacked power to represent the variety and
play of life. We might, perhaps, venture so far as to think
that, great tragic actress as Mrs. Siddons was, she might have
been, in her tragedy, still greater if, in her personality, she had
possessed a few grains more of humour and of comedy. Stage
tragedy which rarely admits even irony to temper it is, of
necessity, perilously far removed from the natural world over
which God's good sun shines. But here, again, genius such as
Mrs. Siddons's, like nature itself, harmonises contradictions,
and makes whatever it does seem right. While her audiences
gazed at her, they felt greatness, as, in our day, we felt great-
ness in Henry Irving.
Fire is the quality that distinguishes the great from the
merely good player, and it was this in Mrs. Siddons which
raised her acting far above Kemble's. With her, however
elaborate her previous study, it was always, in the result, pains-
concealing, thanks to her unfailing capacity for momentary
fire. Hers was not the kind of nature that wastes its nervous
force over afterthoughts and uncertainties. . We have too little
record as to how she accepted suggestions from authoritative
outsiders. We know that when Sheridan, her Manager, tried
to make her alter her action of setting down the candlestick
in the sleep-walking scene, she was obdurate. We are left to
believe that she principally relied on herself in matters that
belonged to her own scope.
It is well worth noticing that her art bore two fruitages.
The first was the expression of what Boaden terms ' gentle
domestic woe,' the second was the expression of earth-shaking
Shakespearean characters, Constance and Lady Macbeth,
THE WAY OF HER GENIUS 79
mellowing, more and more, as her physique altered, into Queen
Katharine and Volumnia^ j We have it from Horace Walpole
that when, during her earlier period, she was asked to play
Lady Macbeth and Glover's Medea, she replied, ' No, she did
not look on them as female characters.'
The Ettrick Shepherd, in apology for the defective plots
of his stories, represented himself saying to Scott, " Dear
Mr. Scott, a man canna do the thing that he canna do." In
the case of a woman it is much the same. The misfortune is
that, by some malice of their lutins, both men and women
appear impelled to do, for their own gratification, not the thing
they can, but the thing they ' canna.' And thus Mrs. Siddons
too long remained unpersuaded as to her inferiority in comedy.
No outsider was influential enough to limit her Rosalind and
Lady Restless to theatres outside London, as Rachel's advisers
limited her Celimene to theatres outside Paris.
Mrs. Siddons's was an age of genuinely comic actresses.
The names of Abington, Farren, and Jordan recall a trio of
comedy queens, variously gifted. To many persons, including
the present writer, perfect comedy acting appears a higher and
maturer thing than the finest tragedy. Tragedy acting is
emotional, whereas comedy must be intellectual. But the
actor has never lived who was equally great in both. Garrick,
in all probability, was at his best when he did not go deep
below the surface. His expression in Garrick between Tragedy
and Comedy leaves no doubt as to what so keen an observer as
Reynolds deemed his stronger gift.
Mrs. Siddons's comedy always appeared forced. It was a
conscious unbending, as though Thalia were Melpomene's
schoolgirl sister. The idea of Mrs. Siddons acting, as she did,
Mrs. Riot in a trivial burlesque like Garrick's Lethe is unseemly,
and even shocking. " Who," said a gentleman, speaking of
this to Lady Charlotte Campbell, " would have wished to see
Sir Isaac Newton auditing the accounts of the mint? or who
would enter into the enjoyments of a catch or a glee sung by
Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ; or a solo on the German flute
by the King of Prussia ; or a fandango danced by the Empress
of Russia ? "
It must be easier to act tragedy than comedy. Macbeth
8o THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
almost acts itself, and it was Macready's pet remark that no
actor ever failed as Hamlet ; but to act Lady Teazle, or Mrs.
Millamant, delicate judgment, vivacity, and breeding are re-
quired. Mrs. Siddons had not the sprightliness, or natural
gaiety of disposition, that is indispensable for success in comedy,
nor did she possess the great comedy ' gift of pace '. on which
Miss Ellen Terry, in her Autobiography, laid so much stress.
Had she been a good comedian she would have made a
more competent woman of society, where all expression is
high comedy. She lacked the necessary versatility. At drums,
she was apt to remain heavily silent. Witness Campbell's
account of her, at a reception in Paris, in 1814, standing, for
some noticeable length of time, mumchance beside the Duke of
Wellington, ' after a first mutual recognizance.' She was grave
by nature. Her temperament was a tragedy temperament,
her face a tragedy face.
We read that she could, 'in her slow way,' tell laughable
stories laughably, or, even (having first ' ordered the parlour-door
to be made fast '), give the speeches of Sir Anthony Absolute so
as to convulse a family party ; and that she was not without
a limited, unrejoicing sense of humour is further demonstrated
by passages in her correspondence, as, for instance, the long
description she gives of the woman who, in August 1782, rode
in the stage coach with her, from Bath to Weymouth, of which
this sentence is a sample : " Her neck, which was a thin scrag
of a quarter of a yard long, and the colour of a walnut, she
wore uncovered for the solace of all beholders." To this we
may candidly prefer Campbell's assurance that Mrs. Siddons
was not too vain or solemn to join in the general laugh on
herself when, in a dismal tragedy, having to make an ardent
exit with a baby in her arms, she set a precedent for Tilly
Slowboy by knocking the baby's wooden head — and with a
resounding thud — against the doorpost.
VII
SOME EARLY PARTS
ANY ONE who has inherited that whitish elephant, an
eighteenth century library, must have been struck by
the extent to which its play-books outnumber its novels.
In Mrs. Siddons's day, every play that ran nine nights appeared,
shortly afterwards, in book form. " The crowd at a manager's
door electrically acts upon a publisher's," wrote an anxious —
and successful — dramatist, Mrs. Inchbald. An unacted tragedy
was never bought. Evidently, there was no demand for a
drama for mental performance only, though Byron thought
there was room for something of the kind, and Scott wrote, in
a letter to Allan Cunningham, "We certainly do not always
read with the greatest pleasure those plays which act best."
A century and one or two decades ago, at Drury Lane or
Covent Garden, an author received £33, 6s. 8d. for the first
nine nights of his play, with the further agreement that, if the
play failed to bring £200 a night, the proprietors were at liberty
to withdraw it. ' Acting rights ' were, as yet, inchoate and ill-
defined.
If, throughout Mrs. Siddons's life, she had acted in none but
Shakespeare's plays, it would be possible to write of her inter-
pretation of women, her delivery of lines, her ' business ' in
scenes, with a hope of being readable ; if, even, her non-
Shakespearean parts had been as near actuality as those of
Mr. Barrie, Mr. Galsworthy, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, the com-
mentator would still be able to call up characters possessing
something that may fairly be termed momentum. But the
tongues of angels would hardly avail to arouse curiosity con-
cerning either Congreve's Zara (The Mourning Bride] or Aaron
Hill's Zara (Zara, adapted from Voltaire's ' Zaire}, still less
6
82 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
concerning two characters whose names are so bewilderingly
alike as Arpasia (Rowe's Tamerlane] and Euphrasia (Murphy's
Grecian Daughter}. What is remarkable is that our, in other
directions, level-headed ancestors should have cared to see
even Mrs. Siddons, ' every week,' x in one of these simulacra of
classicality, when, nowadays, such solid antiques as Julius
Csesar, Cleopatra, Nero, and Ulysses require, to bring houses,
the utmost aid from Mr. Joseph Harker, Mr. Percy Macquoid,
and the machinist.
Not counting Hull, four of Mrs. Siddons's five first season
authors were already classics, viz. Southerne, Otway, Congreve,
and Rowe, and their heroines stock characters. Murphy, alone,
was contemporary with the actress, and no one, then or now,
could hopefully contend that his Grecian Daughter was com-
parable to the work of the elder men. As eighteenth century
acting greatened to Garrick and Siddons, eighteenth century
tragedy proportionately deteriorated.
Next to Southerne's Isabella, there was no part in Mrs.
Siddons's repertory she made more impressive than Belvidera in
Otway's Venice Preserved. Not only did the ultra-susceptible
Anna Seward's tears fall 'in full and ceaseless streams' over
this 'soul-harrowing' impersonation; it drew half-stifled sobs
from all London. When, in 1786, Mrs. Siddons made a single
and 'complimentary' appearance at Covent Garden (with the
pit at box prices) for the benefit of the widow of Henderson —
untimely cut off four months earlier — it was on Belvidera she
relied to attract a packed and profitable house. One of the
longest female parts in English drama, it would be hard to find
another so opulent — as actors say, so juicy — for a competent
representative. Elizabeth Barry, Susanna Gibber, and Anne
Barry had, each in turn, made a chef d'ozuvre of Belvidera.
The central idea — the donnee of Venice Preserved is, it may
be remembered, the shame and downfall brought upon an
originally noble nature, by excessive uxoriousness — a unique
theme, as far as I know, in acting drama. Belvidera's husband,
Jaffier, engages, for her sake, in a murderous conspiracy against
the Venetian senate, of which her unfatherly father is a member.
1 and cried their ' eyes out every time '—Horace Walpole to Mason, December 7th,
1782.
SOME EARLY PARTS 83
A few hours later, Jaffier, yielding to her importunities, betrays
his accomplices, among whom is his close friend, Pierre. The
finest scene in the play is the dialogue, on Pierre's scaffold,
between these two men.
Since the days of Dick Minim, Johnson's Critic who blamed
Otway 'for making a conspirator his hero,' opinions on the
character of Belvidera have differed. Roden Noel considered
her ' own sister to Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona.' Walter Scott
believed she had rightly drawn more tears than Juliet. Lord
Byron, who described himself as, elsewhere, a great admirer of
Otway, styled Belvidera (and the fact that she was an imaginary
character may, perhaps, excuse the quotation of his energetic
phraseology) "that maudlin bitch of chaste lewdness and
blubbering curiosity whom I utterly despise, abhor, and
detest."
It may be noted that Mrs. Siddons's fame for pathos is
founded on parts outside Shakespeare. In Venice Preserved, the
three speeches, all of the briefest, she wrote in letters of fire,
were ' O, thou unkind one ! ' when Jaffier makes her a hostage
for his good faith with the conspirators, * My father ! ' when she
learns the purpose and extent of the conspiracy — into these
words which she repeated, from Jaffier's ' To kill thy father,'
she put a horror that chilled the blood — and, finally, the much-
praised ' Remember twelve ! ' when she is hoping, by wifely
tenderness, to undermine her husband's oath.
With her superlative power of self-excitation, splendid
presence, and a face malleable to every development of
Otway's story, she was, one can entirely believe, ' electrifying,'
as Boaden says, at the moment when Jaffier (in remorse at
having betrayed Pierre) threatens to stab her, and she springs
into his arms, with
4 'Now then, kill me!"
In Otway's The Orphan, she played the character in which
the whole interest centres. In this drama of a wronged wife,
painful and ' unpleasant ' though it is, she found a part more
truly sympathetic to her personality than Belvidera. It was,
from the theatrical standpoint, less effective, and, moreover, the
action of The Orphan suffers from that gravest of dramatic
faults, inadequate causation. Yet an actress could hardly hope
84 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
for lovelier lines, outside Shakespeare, than occur in Monimia's
dying scene —
" I'm here ; who calls me ?
Methought I heard a voice
Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains,
When all his little flock's at feed before him.
i. .......
When I'm laid low i' the grave, and quite forgotten,
Mayst thou be happy in a fairer bride !
But none can ever love thee like Monimia.
When I am dead, — as presently I shall be,
For the grim tyrant grasps my heart already, —
Speak well of me ; and if thou find ill tongues
Too busy with my fame, don't hear me wronged ;
'Twill be a noble justice to the memory
Of a poor wretch once honoured with thy love.
How my head swims ! — 'tis very dark. Good-night ! "
It was not in Otway, but in Congreve, that Dr. Johnson,
when giving his better judgment one of its recurrent holidays,
discovered the ' paragraph ' he declared superior to any other
descriptive passage in English poetry. To modern readers,
Congreve stands for the creator of, in one sense, the purest
comedy that exists, the mordant comedy, and, in spite of Lamb's
plea, the grim, real comedy, of Lady Wishfort and Witwoud and
Millamant, while we regard his one tragedy as uninspired and
negligible. Yet it is worth remembering that The Mourning
Bride contains, in addition to Johnson's piece about the cathedral,
one of the best-known couplets in English drama — and never
was couplet better adapted to an explosive exit, viz. —
"Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorn'd,"
and, moreover, opens with one of the most hackneyed lines in
poetry,
"Music has charms to soothe a savage breast."
All through, there is no penury of ideas in The Mourning
Bride, and with Zara, the more vehement of its two female
characters, executed in the grand style of Mrs. Siddons,
without puny graces or small originalities, it was, to the
taste of our great-grandsires, an impressive performance. In
reading the play, the captive Moorish queen appears merely
.;•
4
SOME EARLY PARTS 85
a tigress; Mrs. Siddons, at least, made her a magnificent
tigress. Godwin told Campbell it was worth a day's journey to
see her walk down the stage in The Mourning Bride. In the last
scene, Zara makes away with herself by means of ' the bowl/ and
here Mrs. Siddons went in for painful physical realism — as she
also did in the fifth act of Jane Shore. No previous actress
had thrown such variety into death. Some one who saw her
Zara in Dublin wrote, naively, but convincingly, as follows : —
" Her resolution of mind visible on drinking the poison, at
the same time the natural antipathy she showed to it, was
strikingly just ; but the apparent working of the deadly draught
was beyond any representation I ever beheld ; at that moment
I quite forgot the exalted soul of the beautiful Zara, and could
only feel for the agony and torture under which a fellow-
creature suffered."
On Mrs. Siddons's other Zara there seems no need to dwell,
beyond observing that it argues more vitality and inspiration
than words can say on the part of Mrs. Gibber, Spranger
Barry, Garrick, and Mrs. Siddons that they, each in turn, made
so dull an affair as Hill's adaptation from Voltaire seem puissant
and alive. " A great actor," said Mme de Stae'l, speaking,
particularly, of Talma, "becomes, by his accents and his
physiognomy, the second author of his parts." Far more than
apparent authorship — which an actor of later eighteenth century
drama might reasonably have repudiated — was done for Zara
by the artists just mentioned. By the splendour of their own
imagination, they hypnotised the audience into taking a piece
of green cheese for the moon.
Another of Mrs. Siddons's earlier dramatists was Nicholas
Rowe, who, while beneath the great how far, quite under-
stood the trick of the scene, the science des planches. Of the
six inherited stock characters of Mrs. Siddons's first season,
Isabella (Southerne's), Belvidera, Monimia, Zara, Calista, and
Jane Shore, a person of to-day would, in all probability, choose
to see Rowe's Jane Shore. We should know, beforehand, some-
thing about the lady. Glamour invests the name of every
king's mistress, world without end.
Rowe's play, which still, in 1909, holds the stage, in the
provinces, contains effective scenes and some clever characterisa-
86 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
tion. The only part that lacks the smallest relief is ' Glo'ster,'
and he is such unadulterated transpontine Crookback that one
might imagine Rowe had never studied the rich arpeggio passages
of intellectuality and irony whereby Shakespeare created a man
in him.
Mrs. Siddons did tremendous things with Jane Shore. The
scene opens when the protagonist is no longer Edward v's
pretty Jane, but poor Jane, as the epilogue, with an epilogue's
customary contemptuousness, names her, of the Ricardian dis-
pensation. Only an original actress could redeem the long-
drawn whimpering of the part, as it stands in the Works of
Rowe. One of its best touches — 'a little burst of genius' — is
where Jane Shore flames up in a blessing upon Hastings, who,
while he persecutes her, defends and protects the late king's
children. But for this generous episode, Mrs. Siddons had to
throw all the variety she could into the monotonous part of
an outlawed Magdalen, knocking at unopening doors, ragged
and famished, till, at last, she was called upon to assume the
pinched face and dead voice of a human being, perishing from
hunger upon the cobbles of the streets. Here, " she excited,"
says Miss Wynn, " that deep thrill of horror which made my
blood tingle at my fingers' end." In connection with the same
scene, another eye-witness gives a vivid impression of how Mrs.
Siddons, like every artist capable of intense and self-forgetting
ideas, could, at times,1 make a complete sacrifice of beauty to
realism, i.e. fidelity to nature. From the moment of Jane
Shore's outlawry, says this anonymous lady writer : —
" Mrs. Siddons ceases to excite pleasure by her appearance.
I absolutely thought her the creature perishing through want,
' fainting from loss of food ' ; — shocked at the sight, I could not
avoid turning from the suffering object; I was disgusted at the
idea, that an event affecting our mortal frame only, should be
capable of producing greater misery than the most poignant
anguish of the mind."
Speaking of Mrs. Siddons's Calista, in The Fair Penitent
(Rowe's disimprovement of Massinger's The Fatal Dowry)) one
of her devotees said it would be worth sitting out the piece for
her scene with Horatio, in order to see ' such a splendid animal
1 As, again, in the part of Volurania. See Young's statement, p. 130.
SOME EARLY PARTS 87
in such a magnificent rage.' This was the part Miss Seward
described to Whalley as the most wonderful in Mrs. Siddons's
repertory, because of its 'conflicting and sublime variety of
passions.' Certainly, it remained a safe card onwards from
the first season to a comparatively late date.1
Turning from these comparatively classic tragedies to some
more recently, and some contemporaneously written, let us
see what Mrs. Siddons made of Murphy's Grecian Daughter
(originally produced in 1772) and a few others of less mark,
before examining the records of her handling of a celebrated
part, Lady Randolph, in Home's Douglas. Again omitting
the heroine of Hull's Fatal Interview, not one of the
characters she played during her first season was ' created '
by her, in the technical sense of having owed to her its
original impersonation in London.
The part of Euphrasia, in The Grecian Daughter, was, as
we have seen, familiar to her before she came back to London,
and, since she desired to make her first night's appearance in
it, no doubt it was the role in which she most 'fancied*
herself. Murphy's tragedy is founded on the familiar legend
of the Grecian daughter, whose starving father became her
nursling, in that (her baby having been torn from her
breast by the tyrant who made the old man captive) she fed
him as she would have fed the infant — a situation which,
even in description, would seem to call for deft stage guidance
to steer it clear of absurdity. Nevertheless, though the tragedy
is unoriginal in style and unveracious in feeling, it must be
believed that it made, in its time, a good stage play. Murphy
was a member of Garrick's Drury Lane company, and, other
things being equal, an actor — take Shakespeare or Moliere as
instances ! — produces better stage plays than a merely literary
person, even be he a Browning or a Tennyson, owing to his
closer acquaintance with the stagecraft side of drama.
"Wild with her grief, and terrible with wrongs,"
as she describes herself, Euphrasia may well have been too strut-
ting an Amazon, but we have seen that the part appealed to Mrs.
Siddons, as all family sentiment so surely did. The character,
1 I cannot find that Mrs. Siddons acted Calista later than October 22nd, 1805.
88 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
in its virtuous energy, suited her heroic mould, she seemed in
it a Greek worthy of the Parthenon, and the force of her
acting, idealising the nerveless stuff she had to utter, 'en-
chained ' the Play-followers (to use a phrase of Foote's) * in a
silent rapture only fearful of its own applause.' It was
unfortunate that Murphy should have required her to cry,
after she has stabbed Dionysius,
" Lo ! there the wonders of Euphrasia's arm,"
and we can only suppose that the Play-followers were as
destitute of humour as the author to let such a line pass.
After a severe course of imperial tragedy, it was only
human in the playgoing public to welcome, with a sigh of
relief, a drama of contemporary private life. On Novem-
ber 22nd, 1783, early in her second season, Mrs. Siddons
revived Moore's The Gamester, acting, on that night, for the
first time in London, with her brother, John, who played
Beverley, the part Garrick had created. Mrs. Siddons was
Mrs. Beverley, and now, and for the next twenty-nine years,
she made the character the most thrilling and real of all her
wifely parts, outside Shakespeare. Moore's play was ultra-
sad, but it contained a genuine idea, and the colloquial
simplicity of its prose strengthened its effectiveness, after so
many ' Ye Gods ! ' in the other tragedies.
Mrs. Siddons's art, commented on by all who ever saw
her act, of heightening unimaginative language till it ' rose
to touch the spheres,' found great scope in The Gamester^ and
detached sentences from it, which seem, when read, bald and
unconvincing, were lovingly quoted by 'old playgoers,' as
having been the peculiar triumphs of her characterisation of
the fond, conciliating, perfect wife. All acting should seem
to be improvisation. Perhaps, in an ideal state, the two
would count as one art. As Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Siddons
seemed to be improvising every syllable. I am reminded of
how far it is from being the case that the finest piece makes
the finest acting, when I reflect that the moment many 'old
playgoers' would most wish to crystallise among their
memories of Miss Ellen Terry's playing is when, in W. G.
Wills's skilful, but, in itself, quite soulless adaptation of The
SOME EARLY PARTS 89
Vicar of Wake-field, she, as Olivia, stooped to wipe her little
brother's eyes.
In The Gamester, the great moment, unassisted, unfettered
by speech, came at the end, and, here, the widow's stare of
misery beside her gambler husband's corpse was likened, by
Leigh Hunt, to nothing less than ' the bewildered melancholy '
of the same actress in the Macbeth sleep-walking scene.
Macready's Reminiscences gives a detailed account of Mrs.
Siddons's Mrs. Beverley, for Macready had the advantage of
playing Beverley to her Mrs. Beverley, for one night, at
Newcastle, in 1812, when her sun was about to set, and his to
rise. Of the last scene, he writes : —
" Her glaring eyes were fixed in stony blankness on his
[i.e. Beverley's] face; the powers of life seemed suspended in
her ; her sister and Lewson gently raised her, and slowly led
her unresisting from the body, her gaze never for an instant
averted from it ; when they reached the prison door she stopped,
as if awakened from a trance, with a shriek of agony that would
have pierced the hardest heart, and, rushing from them,1 flung
herself as if for union in death, on the prostrate form before
her."
The perennial cry, ' Decline of the Drama,' was active during
the last quarter of the eighteenth century, et pour cause. ' The
Siddons ' had no Voltaire, as La Clairon had, to write her plays,
and address letters of criticism and encouragement to her.
With the possible exception of The Stranger, a play translated
from the German, the novelties of her own day did little for her
fame.
It was inevitable that the literary-minded friend should,
from the start, pester her with his manuscript tragedy, or with
a precursory letter to say he had ' a tragedy in great forward-
ness.' Amateur authors are of two types, the one resembling
the mountain in labour, the other as ludicrously oblivious of
the fact that success connotes effort. It was harder for the
pinnacled actress, the sister of Drury Lane's Manager, to return
what John Murray II, in a letter to Byron, termed ' a civil and
1 Mrs. Siddons always instructed an inexperienced Jarvis (the old servant) to hold
her tightly at this point, on account of her dramatic energy and great physical
strength.
90 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
delicate declension ' to applications from persons of the first type
than to airy proposals of something in her way written while
the author's hair was dressing.
Among personal acquaintances we have met already, who,
at one time or another, aimed at the high preferment of Mrs.
Siddons's acceptance of their tragedies, was Bertie Greatheed,
of Guy's Clifife, Esquire, Italianate and Delia Cruscan, the son
of Mrs. Siddons's padrona of long ago. Since the emergence of
the Kemble sister and brother, they had revived, and strongly
cemented, their relations with the gracious and hospitable
owners of the historic retreat beside the Avon.
Bertie Greatheed 's accepted tragedy, The Regent, was
produced at a date — March i/th, 1788 — that made its title,
before all things, ' topical.' * Excellent in parts,' the piece had
been written expressly for, and, it was said, under the presiding
inspiration of, John Kemble. At any rate, Kemble was the
Regent, and Mrs. Siddons was Dianora, the heroine.
One of the characters, asked where the king was, replied —
" Within his tent, surrounded by a friend
Or two " !
Gifford fell upon the play, in his customary style — horse and
foot, artillery and camp-followers — but, even without GifTord, a
tragedy that contained several such howlers was foredoomed.
It crawled through two nights, and then, prompted by a
gradually increasing buzz of inattention from boxes, pit, and
galleries, Mrs. Siddons discreetly retired from her part, on the
plea of indisposition. In those days, no one boggled at that
ambiguous word, and the actress saved her friend, already
banqueting at the Brown Bear, Bow Street, over a supposed
success, the dismay of finding that his piece was being played
to empty benches. Her indisposition, combining with the
public's, practically made an end of The Regent, though it was
announced as held over till April 26th, and was, actually, played,
in all, eight times.1
Whalley was another private friend, who 'landed' Mrs.
Siddons with an impossible tragedy — the tragedy of a thorough-
paced amateur. Following fashion's romantic wave — ruined
1 Genest mistakenly says (vi. 477) it was ' acted but once ' — April ist.
SOME EARLY PARTS 91
turrets and broken bridges were the rage in 1799 — the piece
was called The Castle of Montval^ but its plot was already cut
from under it by ' Monk ' Lewis's The Castle Spectre, recently
successfully produced.
In Whalley's tragedy, a castle contains one room into which
the owner, a Bluebeard II, forbids his bride, during his absence,
to penetrate. Left alone, furnished with a bunch of keys, and
hearing moans issuing from the forbidden chamber, the lady,
accompanied, as far as the door, by a devoted seneschal, enters
it. Within, she finds an incarcerated, venerable, and unexpected
father-in-law, whom she greets with the not unnatural question,
" Are you the ghost? " In conclusion,
" The hero raves, the heroine cries,
All stab, and everybody dies."
Mrs. Siddons and John and Charles Kemble, the last-
named already observed as a studious and improving young
actor, did their utmost for Whalley's tragedy, but the wonder is
that it lived eight nights. An exasperating custom prevailed
on the part of Managers of advertising a mild failure, next day,
as a success. It was partly from this cause that first night
damnations became so violent.
Mrs. Siddons's impersonation of Lady Randolph, in Douglas^
first undertaken by her on December 22nd, 1783, put the final
seal on her reputation. In deciding to play this part she
challenged the, as yet, definitively unconquered Mrs. Crawford,
whose chief estate, almost whose monopoly, Lady Randolph
had become. The direct contest was inevitable, and Mrs.
Siddons was well advised in entering upon it when and how she
did. On the whole, she triumphed. Mrs. Crawford had been a
fine, impassioned Lady Randolph, but, wherever the acting ot
the two most differed, there, it was felt, Shakespeare's standard
and test of dramatic art, the modesty of nature, declared for
Mrs. Siddons.
Among the historic sentences of the stage, comparable with
Henderson's
"The fair Ophelia!"
and Mrs. Siddons's
"Lord cardinal, —
To you I speak,"
92 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
old playgoers counted Mrs. Crawford's
"Was he alive?"
when, as Lady Randolph, she listened to the prisoner's account
of the adventure to which her lost, and, as yet, unrecovered, son
had been, in infancy, subjected. Mrs. Crawford shrieked " Was
he alive ? " on an irresistible maternal impulse, and Bannister says
he once saw half the pit start to its feet at her * heart-gushing '
cry. Mrs. Siddons took the sentence in a different key. She
remembered that Lady Randolph was bound not to reveal her-
self as the boy's mother, and such secrecy had become habitual.
" Was he alive ? " she murmured, in a half-annihilated tone, as
when the heart stands still, and one speaks what one feels, not
what one ought to say. Her question was (to Home's credit) a
profound representation of instinct, thinking aloud, for Lady
Randolph does not seriously believe Old Norval's assurance —
"He was,"
since she instantly hurls back —
"Inhuman that thou art!
How could'st thou kill what waves and tempests spared?"
so proving that the inquiry could not have been, as Mrs.
Crawford interpreted it, the sudden, rushing need to inform
herself of his safety. Furthermore, Mrs. Siddons's faint articu-
lation of
"Was he alive?"
suggested that Lady Randolph's long endurance, its agony
intensified by the details of her child's perils, just listened to
in the shepherd's story, was at last at breaking-point. Here,
as elsewhere, her acting was truthfully imagined, though, by
those who, still, held by Mrs. Crawford's, her rendition of the
part was, naturally, censured. Her ' starts and stares ' were
objected to, and so was the motion of her head, ' which seems
to dance upon elastic wire, like that of Punch's antic Queen.'
On what principle did Mrs. Siddons accept or reject dramatic
parts ? She very properly avoided characters in which there
was what Garrick called * a lofty disregard of nature,' but she
believed, as she told the inquiring ' Lady L' [ucan ?] that, if a
SOME EARLY PARTS 93
part seemed at all within nature, something might be made out
of it. Where there was opportunity for genuine passion, she
knew she could grip the house, though here something might
have to be set in stronger relief than the author had indicated,
and there, something slurred or deleted. A great player
creates, in part, by selection. The degree of skill in selection —
which means the envisagement, the general handling of the
part — largely determines the player's rank as an artist.
We picture Mrs. Siddons running her eye down the pages
of a new tragedy, and, gradually, losing herself in the state of
exaltation actors induce at will, the ever-renewed power to
adopt an imaginary personality, and relinquish, for the passing
hour, their own. As every writer on the histrionic temperament
has pointed out since Diderot published his ' Paradoxel the
player's art is representation, not identification, and, indeed,
the simple fact that nothing on the stage is carried to a legiti-
mate conclusion, that the slain Hamlet does not really die, nor
the distraught Ophelia drift across the footlights, proves that
the player only plays the part. Since, broadly speaking, his
effects depend on his being (like ice) at the same time melting
and cold, the first measure of his greatness as an artist is his
impressibility, the second, his control over it. Not only actors,
but painters, sculptors, writers, are in a tale here. What
that much misused phrase, the Artistic Temperament, rightly
means is the gift all these people possess to enter into, and
reproduce feeling other than their own. It is mental, in
contradistinction to moral, sympathy that makes the artist.
" Cest un certain temperament de bon sens et de chaleur qui
fait Pacteur sublime?
Yet the nobler and more imaginative the player, the more
intensely does he recast his own individuality, and pour himself,
mind and body, into moulds not his. Brief though such im-
personations are, it is impossible — in spite of Diderot — not to
believe that, little by little, they impair the original tissue, and
leave the player, by dint of becoming many, something less
than one. The slightness of the extent to which this dis-
integrative process operated in the case of Mrs. Siddons is one
of the most remarkable facts about her psychological history.
She maintained, behind her many parts, a particularly definite
94 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
individuality, literal and unaffluent it is true, but grappling
with what hooks she had (as Johnson said of Baretti) very
forcibly. When, early in her first season, Lord Carlisle carried
her what Walpole calls ' the tribute-money ' from Brooks's,
he said she was not manieree enough. Alone among actresses,
she was nothing of an actress off the stage.
VIII
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES
JOHN KEMBLE was acting, with distinguished applause,
in Dublin, and mixing there in the best society, through-
out Mrs. Siddons's triumphant first winter in London. At
a dinner in the apartments of Walpole's friend, Captain Jephson,
the playwright equerry, in Dublin Castle, Lord Inchiquin
gave as a toast ' the matchless Siddons,' and, drawing from
his finger a ring, containing her portrait, set in diamonds, sent
it on a salver to Mr. Kemble, to desire his opinion of the
likeness. Where this was the preparative tone in dominant
circles, a starring visit was markedly ' indicated.'
Early in June, 1783, Mrs. Siddons, accompanied by Mr.
Siddons as her natural protector ; William Brereton as a
'First Serious' subsidiary to Kemble; Francis Aickin, in-
valuable in such parts as needed to be * manly, polite, earnest,
and sensible ' ; and one of her sisters, as her private and stage
confidante, crossed the Irish Channel. It was the first time
she had set foot on the sliding sea. " I never felt the majesty
of the Divine Creator so fully before. I was dreadfully sick,"
she wrote to Whalley, and, on the strength of her single
experience, proceeded to give her friend ' a little wholesor"~
advice' against a similar capitulation. " A 11 ways (you see
I have forgot to spell) go to bed the instant you go on board,
for by lying horizontally, and keeping very quiet, you cheat
the sea of half its influence."
Her sufferings were not ended on her reaching the Dublin
landing-stage, on June i6th. The party arrived, after a stormy
passage, at 12.30 a.m. The rain was streaming down, and,
instead of being driven to a comfortable inn, Mrs. Siddons
and Miss Kemble, after spending an hour and a half in the
95
96 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
' dungeon ' of a Custom house, had to walk about the wet
streets, looking for a shelter that, at two in the morning, seemed
momentarily more unlikely. At last, they were taken in at
the house where Brereton's father, Major Brereton, a Dublin
resident, had secured his son a bed, the landlady repeatedly
protesting that it was contrary to her rule to entertain ladies.
Naturally, Mrs. Siddons's first impression of the Irish
capital was unfavourable. She roundly called it 'a sink of
filthiness.' And her unfavourable impression did not, altogether,
wear off as time went on. She took against the people.
"They are all ostentation and insincerity, and in their ideas
of finery very like the French, but not so cleanly. They are
tenacious of their country to a degree of folly that is very
laughable." Thus she wrote, for transmission abroad, on
July I4th. As it chanced, she omitted to prepay the postage
on these treasonable opinions, and the letter was officially
opened in Ireland.
In pursuance of his custom of paying an annual visit to
London to recruit his company, Daly, then Manager of the
Smock Alley Theatre, had personally been over to clinch
an engagement with Mrs. Siddons. Most probably, he went
during ' the Passion Week,' when all the Managers who
wanted people, and all the actors who wanted employment,
habitually assembled in London.
Once more, Mrs. Siddons led off with Southerne's Isabella.
This was on June 21st.1 Seats were at fancy prices. In
a 'humourous Account' of her reception (published after the
second night) included in the miscellany entitled Edwin's
Pills to Purge Melancholy, among a number of less apposite
epithets, she is termed " this Moon of blank verse ! this Queen
and Princess of tears ! this World of weeping clouds ! this
Juno of commanding aspect ! this Proserpine of fire and earth-
quake!" The tone is intentionally insolent. In all probability,
Peter Seguin, the author (who manifests more than the average
Irishman's lack of humour) was a partisan of Mrs. Crawford.
A note to the pasquinade states that, when it first
appeared, 'The lady's friends were outrageous against the
author,' who long 'kept himself snug,' and let others have
1 Boaden says, June 2Oth.
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 97
the discredit of it. Though it was, no doubt, in effect,
libellous to describe a few hisses on the second night as
authoritative, it yet seems clear that Mrs. Siddons did not,
at once, become Dublin's universal idol. In every theatre
outside London, the starring player, the 'exotic/ has to run
the gauntlet of a natural cavil against London's verdict of
merit. It must be acknowledged that, in spite of her
magnetism of sheer power, Mrs. Siddons lacked the quality
better fitted to win the Irish vote — bonhomie. The rougher
element in an Irish audience loved to put itself in personal
relations with the actors on the boards. Lady Morgan's
(and Macready's) story of the man who, in the friendliest
spirit, stage-whispered to Laurence Clinch, as Lothario, from
the gallery, "Larry, honey, there's the laste taste in life of
yer shirt got out behind you," symbolises much. At Cork,
the galleries tried a little familiarity with Mrs. Siddons.
" Sally, me jewel, how are you ? " sang out some one. But
Mrs. Siddons, like the lady in the grammatical example of
the force of the comma, walked on her head a little higher
than usual.
The fresh actress had to conquer the disadvantage of
being English, before an audience accustomed to applaud
first-rate performers who were also Irish. Practically all the
best later eighteenth century players, with the exception of
the two greatest, were of Hibernian extraction. It was not
easy for the newcomer to displace Mrs. Crawford (who, just
before, had been acting at the selfsame theatre) in her ancient
stronghold, whence, in 1803, two years after she died, the
last attempt to prove her superiority emanated — in * Funereal
Stanzas,' strongly dwelling on her 'nature's genuine glow,'
in contradistinction to Mrs. Siddons's ' mock-gems, produc'd
from stone'
Mrs. Siddons's season terminated, says Charles Lee Lewes
(the grandfather of George Eliot's Lewes) on the twelfth night,
or thereabouts. She then went on to Cork, accompanied
by her brother, John. His three years' engagement at Drury
Lane was just signed. ,
Within about ten weeks, Mrs. Siddons made ;£iooo out
of Irish admiration of her art, so that, in spite of P. little
7
98 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
journalistic malice, probably due to pro-Crawford prejudice,
at the outset, she very sensibly thought her first visit to
Ireland a success, and arranged to go there again for a
longer period the following year.
From 1783 onwards until 1805, she paid sjx visits to Dublin.
A pseudonymous booklet, entitled The Beauties of Mrs.
Siddons, gives, in the form of letters, one dealing with each
rdle, a warmly laudatory account of her Dublin appearances
during 1785, when she went through a repertory of six
characters, Belvidera, Zara, Isabella, Margaret of Anjou, Jane
Shore, and Lady Randolph. From chance records we gather
that she woke more general Irish enthusiasm away from
Dublin. She was described, by Francis Twiss, as finishing
her engagement in Belfast in 1785, 'with most uncommon
eclat! Every night the whole of the pit had been turned into
boxes — not a single hat visible.
In the world of society, Mrs. Siddons met with unqualified
success in a country where it had long been the right thing
to pet players. Her Manager, Richard Daly, of Castle Daly,
patentee of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, though no gentleman
where pretty and poor young actresses were concerned,
enjoyed the reputation of paying his company to a shilling;
he was a man of family, and, but for a squint, very good-
looking; on general grounds he appeared justifiably at his
ease on the Mall in Sackville Street, where fashion congregated.
He was well able to make the star and her husband acquainted
with the right people.
Mrs. Siddons had a still better introduction from another
source. The lady, who, as the Hon. Henrietta Boyle, with
her stepfather, then Lord Bruce, had discovered the young
actress at Cheltenham, and become gushingly intimate with her,
now reappeared as the wife of John O'Neill, of Shanes Castle,
on the Antrim shore of Lough Neagh, and to that historic
house — destroyed in its then form (and including the private
theatre Mr. O'Neill built) by fire, not long afterwards — Mrs.
Siddons was cordially bidden on her second visit to Ireland,
in 1784. Her record of her stay there is worth transcribing.
"The luxury of this establishment," she wrote, "almost
inspired the recollection of an Arabian night's entertainment.
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 99
Six or eight carriages, with a numerous throng of lords and
ladies on horseback, began the day by making excursions
over this terrestrial paradise, returning home just in time to
dress for dinner. The table was served with a profusion and
elegance to which I have not seen anything comparable.
The sideboards were decorated with adequate magnificence,
on which appeared several immense silver flagons containing
claret. A fine band of musicians played during the whole
of the repast ; they were stationed in the corridors, which led
to a fine conservatory, where we plucked our dessert, from
numerous trees, of the most exquisite fruits."
N. P. Willis, after a severe course of patrician claret and
1 fruits,' could not * pencil ' more lusciously ; Thackeray,
burlesquing Coningsby, could scarcely outdo the silver flagons
appearing on adequate magnificence. Since her term at
Guy's Cliffe, Mike — but,' as far as her own prestige was con-
cerned, ' oh, how different,' nothing to equal Shanes Castle in
the way of an interior, had come into her experience, for
Langford Court, the Whalleys' place, was not, of course,
maintained in the style of a great country house.
In the O'Neills' party, Mrs. Siddons met and became
interested (as who was not?) in one of the tragic Romantics
of Irish history, one who was a traitor, or a martyr, or a
divine fool, according to the point of view. "Poor Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, the most amiable, honourable, though
misguided youth I ever knew," commented Mrs. Siddons.
During the latter part of her second summer's Irish
engagement, she stayed with Lord Edward's mother,
the re-married Dowager Duchess of Leinster, and enjoyed
the glory of driving in from Frescati, Black Rock, to Dublin
for rehearsals. No wonder that the greenroom monster,
jealousy, gnashed his teeth.
After his classic interview with her at his house in Bolt
Court, Fleet Street, Dr. Johnson decided that the Mrs. Siddons
of 1783 was unspoilt by the two powerful corrupters of man-
kind, praise and money. The discernment of the 'venerable
Luminary ' was better evinced in his general postulate than in
his particular exception. It was shortly after her first visit
to Ireland that rumours began to be heard of some slight
ioo THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
scath from ' praise/ and a certain impairment from ' money.'
One fancies that the Grand Old Sentimentalist spoke while
still under the soft memory of the lady's beauty, and his own
felicity of compliment, when, apologising for Frank Barber's
momentary inability to offer her a chair unencumbered by
books, he said, " Madam, you who so often occasion a want
of seats to other people, will the more easily excuse the
want of one yourself."
It is told that our heroine was so inebriated with the incense
burnt by Irish great ladies and the Lord Lieutenant (who was
an English Duke) that she grew more than a little uppish
towards any humbler people who ventured to approach with
their small joss-sticks. One conte, palpably founded on a
general impression, describes her stonily refusing sittings to
Robert Home, then a Dublin portrait painter, on the plea that
she hardly had time to sit to Reynolds, and then proceeding to
box the man's ears (this detail is not ben trovatd) because he
riposted by saying he should be able to live without painting
her. Another story describes poor * Sid ' telling the wife of a
merchant who was entertaining him and Kemble at dinner, that,
though he should like to further her wish to be introduced to
Mrs. Siddons, he did ' not know how to break such a matter to
her.' " This anecdote," artlessly adds the ' Theatrical Portrait '
in the European Magazine, September, 1783, whence I glean it,
" is not fabricated."
Owing, partly, to her rapid success and fashionable following,
partly to her uncomplaisant character, Mrs. Siddons had, at this
time, a considerable number of theatrical enemies, hissing
detraction. " I have paid severely for my eminence," she said.
The public need never have known much that was mis-
representation, and something, too, that, in her own behaviour,
was regrettable, had it not been that hers was peculiarly a period
in which newspaper editors went avidly scavenging for material
suggested by malice. The most rancorous things ever printed
concerning Mrs. Siddons are to be found in the theatrical
paragraphs of the European Magazine.
She herself attributed the cloud of unpopularity that, more
or less, hung over her during the latter half of 1784 to her
Irish Manager, Daly, in the first instance. Daly was
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 101
admittedly, an inordinately vain man, and, in her Memoranda,
bequeathed to Campbell, she says he could not forgive her for
preventing him, in King John , from standing, as Faulconbridge,
in the centre of the stage, during her ' best scene,' as Constance.
In revenge, she states, he rilled the Dublin press with railings at
her well-known thrift, which his paragraphists called avarice.
Gradually, these railings, stiffened out by modern instances of
her meanness, * found their way ' into the London papers. So
she accounted for the hostile demonstration which, as we shall
see, greeted her on the opening night of her 1784-85 season at
Drury Lane.
Since the causes of the passing and partial wave of odium
that now overtook her were, in a special sense, personal, it is
necessary to our study of her psychological life to
"Let this old woe step on the stage again."
The trouble was connected with two actors : Brereton, who,
in 1784, again accompanied her to Ireland, and Digges, whom
she found there. Brereton was a mediocre tragedian, or, at
least, had only appeared mediocre till, during the winter of
1782-83, he was called upon to play Jaffier to her Belvidera,
at Drury Lane, and (in the language of the day) * derived a new
soul from the collision/ at any rate, played, especially in the
ardent third act, better than he had ever played before.
Every one said that he, a married man, had fallen in hopeless
love with Mrs. Siddons. Very possibly, it was so. The
excellent Mrs. Siddons was the last person to be attendrie by
any Mr. Brereton's susceptibility.
In the summer of 1784, at her desire, Brereton was re-
engaged for Ireland, without salary, but on the understanding
that his emolument was to be a benefit free of charges, with
Mrs. Siddons acting in it. In the middle of the engagement,
he fell ill, was " given over by his physicians," and could not
play for her benefit. When he recovered, and talked of his,
she refused to play for him entirely gratis, because he had
not played for her. £50 per night for twenty consecutive nights
was her pay from Daly, but at the various benefits she accepted
£30. For Brereton, she now proposed to play for £20. Finally,
partly in consequence of illness on her part, which sliced
102 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
almost a fortnight off the benefit end of her season, his
benefit never took place. Since his mental health was already
quivering — while in Dublin he attempted suicide; in 1785,
became stark mad; and, in 1787, died in Hoxton Asylum —
he, most likely, expressed over vehemently to his friends his
disappointment about his benefit, and his friends, in all
probability, retailed his indignation rather than the exact facts
of his injury, whereby the statement got about that Mrs.
Siddons had refused, on any consideration, to act for him.
What a newspaper correspondent (supposed to be Kemble)
who wrote over the signature of ' Laertes/ urged in defence of
her apparent hardness merits consideration —
" Mr. Brereton and his wife have an ample salary at Drury
Lane Theatre. They cannot receive less than five hundred
pounds per annum. Mrs. Siddons performed for the benefit
of Mr. Brereton only a few months before, by which he must
have cleared nearly two hundred pounds. Could he be, there-
fore, an object of such necessity as to require a gratis
performance ? "
At about the same date (July, 1784), unfortunately for Mrs.
Siddons, old West Digges, whose life had been none too
reputable and none too prosperous, fell down, paralysed,
whilst rehearsing with her in Dublin. As to what she did,
or did not do, on this occasion, to assist a broken brother-actor,
accounts materially vary. " It occurred to me that I might
be of some use to him, if I could persuade the Manager to
give him a night at the close of my engagement. I proposed
my request to the Manager," is what she says. Her ill-wishers
and the irresponsible accused her of first refusing to act, and,
later, of demanding £50 if she acted, with an understanding
that the fact of the fee was to be kept secret. Here, calumny
stood confessed, for it was preposterous to allege she had
asked Digges £20 more than she would have asked any
actor in possession of a salary and good prospects.
In the following memoranda of Mrs. Siddons's own, we do
not, I fear, catch a vision of Our Lady of Bounties, joyous in
bestowal, and making little of her act of grace —
" By indefatigable labour, and in spite of cruel annoyances,
Mr. Siddons and myself got together, from all the little country
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 103
theatres, as many as would enable us to attempt 'Venice
Preserved.' Oh! to be sure it was a scene of disgust and
confusion. I acted Belvidera, without having ever previously
seen the face of one of the actors. Poor Mr. Digges was most
materially benefited by this most ludicrous performance; and
I put my disgust into my pocket, since money passed into
his."
What had never been cordially conceded was .grudgingly
carried out, but, certainly, under adverse conditions. These,
however, Mrs. Siddons appears to have brought upon herself
by her delayed second thoughts, for when Digges's ' messenger,'
who was, seemingly, Daly, originally applied to her, it is
inconceivable that he proposed to have the benefit held over
till after the company had moved to Limerick.
Unhappily, Mrs. Siddons had by no means heard the last
of the charmless name of 'poor Mr. Digges.' When she
returned to London, she found that evil report had been busy,
and, by September 3Oth, felt it necessary to put forth, in Mr.
Siddons's name, a newspaper letter, denying the truth of the
accusations levelled at her, while laying the burden of actual
disproof on Brereton, who, also, was in London, and on
Digges. Three days later, Mr. Siddons was able to publish
the following letter, addressed — in no very large-hearted style —
to himself, from Brereton : —
" SIR, — I am concerned to find Mrs. Siddons has suffered
in the public opinion on my account. I have told you before,
and I again repeat it, that to the friends I have seen I have
taken pains to exculpate her from the least unkindness to me
in Dublin. I acknowledge she did agree to perform at my
benefit for a less sum than for any other performer, but her
illness prevented it ; and that she would have played for me
after that had not the night been appointed after she had
played three times in the same week — and that the week after
her illness — and I am very willing you shall publish this letter,
if you think it will be of the least service to Mrs. Siddons, to
whom I am proud to own many obligations of friendship.
I am, Sir, your very humble servant,
" W. BRERETON "
This letter made the newspapers very active and foolish.
104 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
What follows — from the General Advertiser, October 7th, is a
specimen of the sort of thing editors printed then : —
"QUERE, TO MR. BRERETON
" Did you or did Mr. Siddons write the letter signed
W. Breretont Answer this as you value your HONOUR; for
much depends upon it. The public say Mr. Siddons wrote,
and that you scratched, and then signed. — THEATRICUS."
Perhaps Kemble or some other one of Mrs. Siddons's
champions represented to Brereton that his letter read un-
commonly cold. By October 5th he had been induced to
address 'The Printer of the Public Advertiser* in another,
equally fishlike. " Why," inquires ' Laertes,' censuring what
he calls Brereton's " unexplicit first card " and " last summary
card," " did he not gratefully step forward by a circumstantial
letter, as he was repeatedly called upon, previously to Mrs.
Siddons's arrival ? . . . [His] expressions seemed extorted and
inconclusive. The tongues of slander, in broken sentences,
discovered mercenary motives only in their explication of less
sum, though attempted to be veiled, they said, by Mr. Brereton's
delicacy. Whereas the transaction was veiled only by his
obscure brevity."
Tom King, Mrs. Siddons's loyal friend, introduced a
tentative and understood reference to 'living worth,' in the
prologue with which, on September 3Oth, he opened the Drury
Lane season, but the line was ill received by a portion of the
audience. It must be conjectured that when Mrs. Siddons
drove down from her newly leased house in Gower Street,1 to
the theatre, for her first performance, on October 5th (at ' Half
after Six,' The Gamester, Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Siddons) she was
apprehensive of unpleasantness.
It came, as soon as she appeared, in the form of hisses 2 and
a cry of 'Off! Off!' She waited; the clamour grew louder.
1 " . . . the back of it is most effectually in the country, and delightfully pleasant"-
Mrs. Siddons to Whalley. Whalley, i. 425. I am indebted to Mr. A. R. 6. Stutfield,
of the Bedford Office, for the facts that No. 14 (now 28) was the number of the
house, and that William Siddons agreed to become assignee of the lease from
1 786 until 1814.
2 The Morning Chronicle, October 6th, said that an eighth of the audience hissed.
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 105
Two or three times she tried to speak, but vainly. At length —
I quote from her own account, in the Campbell Memoranda, of
this ordeal of an evening —
" A gentleman stood forth in the front of the pit, . . . who
accosted me in these words : ' For heaven's sake, madam, do
not degrade yourself by an apology, for there is nothing
necessary to be said/ I shall always look back with gratitude
to this gallant man's solitary advocacy of my cause : like ' Abdiel,
faithful found ; among the faithless, faithful only he! His
admonition was followed by reiterated clamour, when my dear
brother appeared, and carried me away from this scene of
insult. The instant I quitted it, I fainted in his arms ; and,
on my recovery, I was thankful that my persecutors had not
the gratification of beholding this weakness. After I was
tolerably restored to myself, I was induced, by the persuasions
of my husband, my brother, and Mr. Sheridan, to present my-
self again before that audience by whom I had been so savagely
treated, and before whom, but in consideration of my children,
I would have never appeared again."
Encouraged, no doubt, by the friendlier voices that had
been calling her back, Mrs. Siddons came on alone, advanced
to the centre of the footlights, and, gazing into the cavern full
of eyes that fronted her, thus addressed the house : —
" Ladies and Gentlemen, — The kind and flattering partiality
which I have uniformly experienced in this place would make
the present interruption distressing to me indeed, were I in the
slightest degree conscious of having deserved your censure.
I feel no such consciousness. The stories which have been
circulated against me are calumnies. When they shall be
proved to be true my aspersers will be justified ; but, till then,
my respect for the public leads me to be confident that I shall
be protected from unmerited insult."
It was a dignified denial, and its speaker's steadiness under
fire created a revulsion of feeling. King came forward to
entreat a few minutes for her to recover from what the Public
Advertiser termed * her flurry,' and, when the curtain presently
rose on Mrs. Beverley, the house was hushed. " Mrs. Siddons,
on Tuesday evening," said the Morning Chronicle, "in a new
and irksome situation indeed, displayed the most sincere
io6 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
innocence, even by the peculiarity of her fortitude." It was
her lifelong gift to shine brightest in adversity.
Up to October 22nd, in consequence of adverse winds
delaying the Irish mails, Digges's solicited testimonial was still
to seek. It then appeared, in the Morning Chronicle, as
follows : —
" SIR, — I empower you to declare to the publick, that I did
not pay Mrs. Siddons for playing for my benefit. I thanked the
lady by letter for her politeness, which I am informed she has
mislaid. I think it is but justice to inform you of this.
"WEST DlGGES
"To Mr. Woodfall"
This was even worse — certainly, more churlish — than
Brereton's reserved exculpations. As regarded the unkindest
cut in each allegation as to ' benefits forgot/ Mrs. Siddons had,
clearly, been slandered ; yet it was no great wonder that, in the
face of such evidence to this as Brereton and Digges's letters,
the average man caught up and conserved an eidolon he could
name stingy Siddons, the Lady Sarah Save-All. When a
public that lives on catchwords gets hold of catchwords as
well adapted to its comprehension as these, it does not readily
drop them, and so Mrs. Siddons, like Garrick before her, was,
throughout her life, found guilty, by the gallery verdict, of an
undue love of money. The average man resents thrift in a
class he has been brought up to summarise, on the financial
side, as light come, light go. It upsets his labels. Secretly,
he would prefer to hold the nose of every 'bohemian,' to a
grindstone, engraved, at first, ' open-handedness/ and, later,
1 improvidence.'
' Laertes ' may have been a special pleader, but he talked
sense when he asked, "If a lady, perhaps, be prudent in
making a future provision for herself and family — a theatrical
phenomenon indeed ! — must she sacrifice that prudence at
the shrine of the imprudence of others ? " It is almost needless
to say that those members of Mrs. Siddons's own profession
who were not addicted to 'muddling away money on trades-
men's bills ' enthusiastically joined the hue and cry against her.
They could not deny the statement made by Lee Lewes that,
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 107
at Cork, in 1783, she gave two benefits for charities, in addition
to her gratis performances at Aickin's benefit and at Lewes's
own. But they could make vague, oblique accusations —
that she 'would as soon part with her eye teeth as with a
guinea/ that she was the one parsimonious person at green-
room collections for indigent actors, that at St Martin's
Church, while the organ was playing out the congregation
on a hospital Sunday, she lingered behind to evade the plate.
Mrs. Abington's generosity to all fellow - players at their
benefits was bepraised. It might have been retorted
that Mrs. Siddons was an actress who had no sources of
income less honourable than her art. In the Public
Advertiser r, for February 3rd, 1785, appeared a letter (attri-
buted to 'Shakespeare' Steevens) in which Mrs. Siddons's
'rapture' of hospitality in the Macbeth banquet scene was
sarcastically contrasted with her abstention from hospitality
in Gower Street.
Not only journalists, but pamphleteers also, enormously
worked up any depreciatory gossip of the coulisses. As late
as 1786, for example, a tract appeared, entitled The Green-
Room Mirror, with an article — the last of many on various
players — on Mrs. Siddons, bearing, for motto, Rosalind's
" Who might be your mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once,
Over the wretchedl" etc. etc.
after which, the mouther proceeded to talk about "Adversity
metamorphosed into Affluence, riding in the chariot of Plenty^
hurling that identical Charity by which she was rendered an
object of notice and independence, from the throne of pity to the
eternal seat of despair " !
However much we may be admirers of Mrs. Siddons, it is
impossible to consider that she came, in reality, altogether
well out of either the Brereton or the Digges affair. Some-
thing may be allowed for misunderstanding, something for
the malicious report of the envious, yet, taken all round, the
evidence obliges us to see that she was, at best, only kind,
in the Digges case, on an arriere pensee. It must frankly
be stated that she never felt any spontaneous prompting to
io8 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
take the children's — her children's — bread, and cast it to
dogs of actors. The generosity towards brother-players in
distress which is so winning a characteristic of the majority
of successful players she did not possess. She had less esprit
de corps even than the majority of wedded women. Her sense
of responsibility was limited to the wants of her own nestlings.
It was in keeping that, at a much later date (1815), she refused
to play, except ' on her brother's terms '— Le. half the receipts
and a clear benefit — for the widow and orphans of her son
Henry, who died while Manager of the Edinburgh Theatre.
She was the crude mother of the animal world, and, like all
organisms that conform to Nature's plan —
" Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be" —
she felt strong and satisfied, and lived her life untroubled
by the prick of conscience.
Late in 1784, or early in 1785, Lord Hardwicke introduced
to her a book of Greek history. She was studying a new
part (Desdemona) which allowed her little time for inde-
pendent reading, but when Lord Hardwicke asked her how
she liked the book, she replied, in an unpublished letter
among the recently acquired Hardwicke MSS in the British
Museum —
" I think the memoirs of Pericles laid the strongest hold
on me, this perhaps may be accounted for by my presumption
having felt myself in some measure in his situation having
been the favourite of the Mob one year — and the next de-
graded by them — it remains only — that I may like him be
reinstated, when Malice is cold, and Candour takes its turn.
Your Lordship does me honour in desiring to be mentioned in
my Memoirs if the world shou'd ever be troubled with them
it will reflect great honour on me to say I had the suffrage
of so noble a Personage."
Mrs. Siddons sometimes spelt amiss, but she rarely, if
ever, wrote shambling English. At all times, she was, if
an increasingly procrastinating and infrequent, a fluent and
able letter-writer, though, occasionally, her tendency towards
plausibility, le beau geste, and even self-righteousness rather
MRS. SIDDONS
HY GAINSBOROUGH
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 109
mars the impression of her which her letters would, otherwise,
unfailingly produce.
By one of life's unlucky concatenations, Dublin was,
once more, in 1802, the scene of a reported niggardliness on
Mrs. Siddons's part. Then, Frederic E. Jones, a man of
property and position, who, at the time, magnificently
managed the Theatre Royal, appears to have failed to carry
into effect her assent — her cheerful assent, she afterwards called
it — to his proposal that she should give her services in a per-
formance for the benefit of the Lying-in Hospital. Wrongful
report charged her with the whole fault of the omission of
the performance, her popularity was again threatened, and,
although the trustees of the hospital publicly contradicted the
aspersion on her — 'Mrs. Siddons had most certainly never
refused to act for them, and indeed had never been requested
to do so,' she thought it necessary to address to ' that tyrant
Jones ' * an open letter, explanatory of, at all events, her
innocence of having been unready to assist * so laudable an
institution/
Mrs. Siddons took Edinburgh by storm. She first went there
for a nine nights' engagement,2 in 1784, on her way to Dublin
and Cork. " They treated me," she said of the Scotch, writing,
on June 2ist, to Whalley, "most nobly." She had cause to
intensify the remark with each fresh visit she made. On one
day, 2550 people applied for the 650 seats at the disposal of
the Management, and the Church Synod had to arrange its
meetings to suit her performances. Siddons fever ran so high,
and a sense of the grotesque was so lacking, that, once, at a
later date, ' the Athenians ' encored her sleep-walking scene in
Macbeth, till she was obliged to go through it again. At
Edinburgh, in 1784, in nine nights, she cleared considerably
over fyoo. She carried home, not only gold, but silver. The
latter took the form, in 1784, of a hot-water urn ('an elegant
tea-vase'), in 1788, of a 'massive' tea-tray, presented by
the Faculty of Advocates, and inscribed ' To Mrs. Siddons
As an Acknowledgment of Respect for Eminent Virtues,
1 Mrs. Galindo's letter to Mrs. Siddons, Appendix, 48, 1809.
2 She actually acted ten nights, in the ordinary way, an eleventh for the benefit
of ' the Charity Workhouse,' and a twelfth for her own benefit.
i io THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
and of Gratitude for Pleasure Received From Unrivalled
Talents.'
Macbeth and Douglas, the two national plays, were the
pieces that best pleased Scots audiences. At Douglas, Cale-
donia clapped its hands and wings, and, once again, declared
Home the Shakespeare, or something greater, of his country.
Then, or earlier, Walpole might have walked in peril of his life
had he murmured over the Border what, in his acid and lively
way, he proclaimed at * Twittenham ' — that he knew no prose
written by Home but his poetry. In England, only Mrs.
Siddons's genius kept Douglas so long in the catalogue of
acting plays.1
Boaden discovered that it was the civilising influence of
the University that caused Mrs. Siddons to be so much admired
in Edinburgh — "the neighbourhood of learning is always
friendly to taste." Very likely, he was right. She was
welcomed into Edinburgh's best society. On her first visit, she
made the acquaintance of Hume, Blair, Home, Mackenzie, and
Beattie. On later occasions, she met Henry Erskine, and was
the guest of the Great Unknown.
When she began to act before a Scots audience she was
chagrined by its impassivity. " Stupid people, stupid people ! "
she involuntarily murmured, on the stage. Afterwards, she
used to amuse London friends by describing how, at last, as
Belvidera, she nerved herself for one tremendous effort, as who
should say, Logs, if you cannot rise to that, I despair of you!
At the conclusion of the passage, and as she paused, exhausted,
for breath, the comfortless silence was thawed by a voice
saying, " That's no bad ! " which opened the floodgates of
laughter, and of loud and long applause. After this, Edinburgh
audiences wallowed in responsiveness. Tears and groans rent
the theatre, and gentlemen, as well as ladies, fell into fits. To
the actress, these physical tributes were — in her top-window
language — the ' public marks ' of the ' gratifying suffrages ' of
her ' northern friends.'
1 No better criticism of Douglas exists than is to be found in a letter, in Mr. J.
H. Leigh's Collection, from Garrick to Lord Bute, July loth, 1756, included in Some
Unpublished Letters of David Garrick, Edited by George Pierce Baker, Boston,
1907.
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES in
With her first Edinburgh Manager, John Jackson, Mrs.
Siddons's relations were less rosy. Her acting brought in big
receipts, but so much of the stream poured solely into her pocket
that, at the end of the engagement, Jackson, who was lessee as
well as Manager, found he had made a bad speculation. After
he had agreed to the star's original terms, ' a leading person in
the Parliament House ' started a £200 subscription, as to the
destination of which Manager and actress disagreed, and,
though Mr. and Mrs. Siddons insisted on an arrangement more
favourable to themselves than the first proposed, on account of
this assistance to the Manager, eventually the £200 subscription
found its way into the Siddons bank balance, as a separate
item.
In 1788, Mrs. Siddons again brought Jackson ill luck,
though, this time, the fault lay solely with some turbulent limbs
of the law who would not suffer the parts of Jaffier and Pierre, in
Venice Preserved, to be cast according to Jackson's managerial
judgment.1 By 1790, Jackson was involved in difficulties,
'connected with his great expense in the engagement of the
principal London performers.' From 1791 to 1800, Stephen
Kemble leased the Theatre Royal. A good deal later, we shall
find Mrs. Siddons acting there under the Management of her
son, Henry, who became lessee in 1809, partly in consequence
of his marriage with the actor-dramatist, Charles Murray's,
daughter. Sir Walter Scott had been anxious to see Henry
Siddons lessee and Manager. He knew the family interest
would bring his friend, Kemble, as well as Kemble's diviner
sister, oftener to Scotland. He purchased a share in the
concern, and became one of the acting trustees for the general
body of proprietors.
Mrs. Siddons was an indefatigable tourer. In August, 1795,
she told Whalley she had travelled, on tour, that summer,
nearly nine hundred miles. It was mentioned as a great feat
that, in 1784, she acted in London, Bath, and Reading, within
four days, and, in estimating her rarely remitted labours, the
fatigue and discomforts of moving from place to place by stage
coach are an element not to be overlooked.
1 "Mrs. Siddons's performances were suspended for a whole week." — Genest,
vii. 129.
112 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
"Here I am," she writes, in May, 1796, "sitting close in
a little dark room, in a little wretched inn, in a little poking
village called Newport Pagnell. I am on my way to Manchester,
where I am to act for a fortnight; from whence I am to be
whirled to Liverpool, there to do the same. From thence I
skim away to York and Leeds."
LJnbeautiful Leeds she called, by the way, the dirtiest,
most disagreeable town 'in His Majesty's dominions, God
bless him.' Most years she played two or three weeks'
engagement round Wilkinson's Yorkshire circuit. She told
Whalley that, six months before she reached York, all the
boxes were taken. Wilkinson gave her the highest stage
character : —
" She never heeds trouble — if truly indisposed, and possible
to rise from her bed, she is certain in her duty to the public.
She has not known until she arrived at York, what play she
was first to appear in, or what characters she was to act during
a course of six plays. If a dress has not arrived in time by
the carriers, she sometimes has asked what was to play such
a night ; never saying such a play will do better than another,
or such a part would be too fatiguing."
She played at Plymouth, Exeter, Bath, Birmingham ; at
Liverpool, at Manchester, at Glasgow, at Belfast.1 Wide
was her parish, and houses far asunder, but, everywhere, was
Tom Tidler's ground, and, at home, there were five or six
mouths looking up to be fed. Mrs. Siddons could make as
much in two months on tour as in the entire winter (not
counting her benefits) in London.
It was impossible that the star should always find herself
well supported in country theatres. A propos, her daughter,
Sally, aet. 23, wrote, on one occasion, from Cheltenham, to
Sally Bird, regarding ' Callista,' " It destroys all my fine feel-
ings when I see my Mother sigh and lament herself for the
sake of such wretched creatures."2 Another provincial trial
Mrs. Siddois could not easily away with was the less
cultivated, i.t\ the less rapturous and prolonged applause. In
1 In John Halifax, Gentleman, we see her, in her sedan, on her way to the theatre,
in 'Coffee-house Yard, Coltham.'
2 An Artist's Lone Story > 50.
HER STARRING EXPERIENCES 113
her own words, "A cold respectfulness chills and deadens an
actress, and throws her back upon herself, whereas the warmth
of approbation confirms her in the character^ and she kindles
with the enthusiasm she feels around." Could the whole
situation of the player be more intelligibly put ?
8
IX
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE
DURING the theatrical season of 1782-83, Mrs. Siddons
essayed no Shakespearean part. Why she was allowed
to remain even so long out of the central current in
the dramatic channel we have no means of knowing. The
European Magazine for October, 1783, rashly suggested that her
abstention was due to 'reasons which she either did not per-
ceive, or would not dare to own.'
In fixing on her first Shakespearean character — im-
personated, November 3rd, 1783, the opening night of her
second season — she made a singular choice, which it would
be hard to believe was not her own. Instead of plunging
into the rich Italian love-making of Juliet, or identifying
herself with Cordelia — with whom she would have been more
in sympathy than with Juliet — she elected to become the
heroine of the dark and painful comedy of Measure for
Measure.
Shakespeare's Isabella is one of the very few women in
drama who represent principle, not passion. Measure for
Measure is a problem play. The problem is whether a sister
will purchase her brother's life with her own dishonour. For
a similar problem, with a dissimilar solution, Maeterlinck's
Monna Vanna ought to be read side by side with Measure for
Measure.
Isabella's grandly imaginative diction could not, in the
flesh, have been Mrs. Siddons's, but, as regarded the rest of
the character — the fierce chastity, the inexistence of one
moment's hesitancy on the score that it is not her own life, but
some one else's, she is sacrificing to her cloistral whiteness, the
alacrity with which she accepts the repulsive substitution of
114
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 115
Mariana — Mrs. Siddons was the actress of all time best fitted
to impersonate such a temperament.
No very direct criticism of her acting of Isabella is forth-
coming. Boaden and Campbell both gave a general eulogium ;
the European Magazine spoke — on principle — slightingly of
the performance; it seems clear that not even Mrs. Siddons,
standing before the house in her serious beauty, first to plead
for her brother, then to disown him, could make the rigidity of
the part acceptable. Though it is true she acted it seven times
in her final season, her Shakespeare's Isabella never attained
the popularity of her Southerne's Isabella.
She was too intellectual an actress to be content to remain
any longer outside the circle of those Campbell calls 'the
great females of Shakespeare.' On December loth, 1783, she
appeared in the brief, but magnificent, part of Constance, in
King John.
It is impossible to believe that, even in the case of the
finest players, profound emotion, profoundly imagined, can
spring out complete and full at a first performance. To the
merely literary student, so great a character as Constance is
enigmatic, by reason of its simplicity, and the self-consistency
of it only rounds into view after repeated reading. The very
fact that the part is traditionally remembered as one of Mrs.
Siddons's highest achievements, while its original production
was, in many quarters, adversely criticised, points to an im-
personation that gained in maturity, force, and volume as time
went on. The genesis of a great impersonation is as baffling
to trace as the genesis of any other work of art, but, at least,
we may be sure that no great impersonation sets solid at the
first representation. Kemble expressively termed his early
Wolsey 'raw,' and Mrs. Siddons 'used to pride herself,' says
Campbell, on having improved in all her great characters. She
told Mrs. Jameson that she had played Lady Macbeth during
thirty years, and scarcely once, without carefully reading over
her part, and, generally, the whole play, in the morning ; and
that she never read over the play without finding something
new in it ; " something," she said, " which had not struck me
so much as it ought to have struck me." The player's ac-
cumulating experience of life is bound to ripen each one of
u6 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
his, or her, interpretations of it. No sincere actor ever ' put a
part to bed.'
The character of Constance deeply interested, and, at the
same time, perplexed the thoughtful actress. She felt the
difficulty of maintaining its cumulative wrath and desperation,
in view of the calamities that cause these feelings being always
developed when Constance is off the stage.
"Gone to be married! gone to swear a peace!"
and
"No, I defy all counsel, all redress"
are two as difficult entrances as are to be found in drama. As
a means towards stimulating herself into Constance's continuously
accelerated exasperation, Mrs. Siddons hit on a childlike device.
She described it in those remarks on the character of Constance
(they are rather — as was natural — memoranda on her acting of
the part) which she gave Campbell for inclusion in his biography
of her : —
" The quality of abstraction has always appeared to me so
necessary in the art of acting, that ... I wish my opinion were
of sufficient weight to impress the importance of this power
on the minds of all candidates for dramatic fame. . . . When-
ever I was called upon to personate the character of Constance,
I never, from the beginning of the play to the end of my part
in it, once suffered my dressing-room door to be closed, in
order that my attention might be constantly fixed on those
distressing events which, by this means, I could plainly hear
going on upon the stage, the terrible effects of which progress
were to be represented by me. Moreover, I never omitted
to place myself, with Arthur in my hand, to hear the march,
when, upon the reconciliation of England and France, they
enter the gates of Angiers to ratify the contract of marriage
between the Dauphin and the Lady Blanche ; because the
sickening sounds of that march would usually cause the bitter
tears of rage, disappointment, betrayed confidence, baffled
ambition, and, above all, the agonizing feelings of maternal
affection to gush into my eyes. In short, the spirit of the whole
drama took possession of my mind and frame, by my attention
being incessantly riveted to the passing scenes."
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 117
Though there was more in Mrs. Siddons's Constance than
came of leaving a dressing-room door open, it is interesting
to be let into the technical * secret ' of an artistic triumph. As
we might know from the above extract, Mrs. Siddons was
completely in accord with Sir Henry Irving as to the value
of the process he called passing a character through t he actor's
own mind. She, in her more dictionary English, said, still
writing of the part of Constance, the same thing : —
"If it ever were, or ever shall be, pourtrayed with its
appropriate and solemn energy, it must be then, and then only,
when the power I have so much insisted on [i.e. of * abstraction ']
co-operating also with a high degree of enthusiasm, shall have
transfused the mind of the actress into the person and situation
of the august and afflicted Constance"
Mrs. Siddons's playing of Constance was the highest thing
she had yet grasped. Her mere bearing in the part was
a piece of genius. Campbell, who could always speak well
regarding anything he had actually seen, said of her Constance's
* vicissitudes of gesture' that they made you imagine her body
thought. In other words, every muscle and nerve of her acted.
At all times, she had that Bandar celeste' — Romola Melema's
way, that (as Northcote said of the walk of Italian women in
general) c affects you like seeing a whole procession.' We can
fancy the eloquence of motion with which, as untameable
Constance, she came down the ensemble between the recreant
princes. We can fancy, too, the regal gesture with which, in
the third act, she took the earth, as her niece, Fanny Kemble,
says, ' not for a shelter, not for a grave, or for a resting-place,
but for a throne.'
In her last scene, the anguish she threw into Constance's
speeches about her 'pretty Arthur,' her 'gracious creature/
waxing, in captivity,
'as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,'
made a high-water mark in Shakespearean expression. These
speeches, uttered by her, came less as the cries of a robbed
lioness than as the agony of an imaginative woman, convinced,
without certain knowledge, of her tender child's suffering death.
The strong motherliness in Mrs. Siddons's nature helped to
ii8 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
make her Constance so real and great. Her acting, said
Boaden, always seemed to need ' the inspiration of some duty,'
and if for ' duty ' we substitute ' family affection/ the comment
becomes all the more just. Broadly speaking, Mrs. Siddons
was best in parts that were most like herself.
Could the truth be ascertained, the key to the success of any
actor in a special character would, in all probability, be found
in certain complexional resemblances, independent of genius,
between the two, which enable a ready and perfect identification
to take place. Not that the man who plays a villain is
a villain, but, deep in * the buried temple/ an actor must possess
some natural adaptability to certain roles, and not to others.
Scott could only imagine Lady Macbeth ' with the form and
features of Siddons/ and, even to the present day, what seen
Lady Macbeth stands as vividly before the mind as the Siddons
of tradition, laving her hands, in what Hazlitt ambiguously
termed ' the night scene ' ? She first played the part in London
on February 2nd, 1785, her benefit night. She was thirty — in
the plenitude of her saliency and power. Yet, none the less,
this was a supreme test, and some of the finest brains in
England — Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Fox, and Windham — were
present to estimate the performance.
It proved to be something to which the word ' performance '
seems entirely inadequate. It was transfiguration, transub-
stantiation. The part appeared made for her by the same instinct
which, in ancient times, combined poet and prophet in one.
The detractors who had persisted that she was only equal
to Rowe's, Voltaire's, and Cumberland's showy shadows were
put to silence. Reynolds's golden idea of identifying her with
Melpomene was confirmed by all classes of the public. In this
crucial essay, she definitively showed that her true field lay
among the high actions and passions which make great drama
a discipline in ethics.
We have followed her own account of the infiltration of the
part into her imagination,1 and, through Campbell, she be-
queathed to the public a written summary of her reflections
on Lady Macbeth's personality, reflections which, though not
particularly subtle, and histrionic, in point of view, rather than
1 P. 39-
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 119
critical, are extremely interesting, coming whence they do. It
would not have been easy for Johnson to say of her what he
said of Garrick — that he very much doubted if he ever examined
one of Shakespeare's plays from the first scene to the last.
Lady Macbeth has been only less patient than Hamlet of
divers interpretations. Mrs. Siddons imagined her a fragile
blonde, and would have applied to her the lines she was fond
of quoting from Marmion —
' c It was a fearful sight to see
Such high resolve and constancy,
In form so soft and fair."
Two further new suggestions occur in Mrs. Siddons's
remarks. She held that Lady Macbeth forecast and intended
the murder of Banquo and his son as early as Macbeth himself,
for the simple reason that when, as his first hint of it to her,
Macbeth says —
"Thou know'st, that Banquo, and his Fleance lives,"
her reply is
"But in them nature's copy's not eterne."
Conformably to this, Mrs. Siddons believed that, at the
banquet, Lady Macbeth, equally with her husband, saw
Banquo's ghost, though with a scheming woman's self-control
and a wife's nobler protectiveness of her husband's credit,
she smothered, and denied, the fact.
In acting the part, the first great original touch Mrs.
Siddons gave was her suspension of voice in "they made
themselves — air" the second, her amazing burst of energy
over " shalt be," in
"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor — and shalt be
What thou art promis'd "
— an epitome of the play.
She became still more decisive and terrible in the succeeding
scenes, each of which she made culminate in a line —
"O never
Shall sun that morrow see ! "
"Give ME the daggers."
"My hands are of your colour."
Her words were not mere words, but tremendous suggestions.
120 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
To Mrs. Jameson we owe the record of how, in Act I. 7,
Mrs. Siddons adopted, successively, three different intonations
in giving the words, " We fail." At first, it was a quick,
contemptuous interrogation — " We fail ? " Afterwards, with
the note of exclamation, and an accent of indignant astonish-
ment, she laid the principal emphasis on we — " We fail!"
Lastly, she fixed on what, says Mrs. Jameson,
" I am convinced is the true reading — ' We fail,' with the
simple period, modulating her voice to a deep, low, resolute
tone, which settled the issue at once, as though she said, ' If
we fail, why, then we fail, and all is over.' . . . The effect was
sublime."
At the solemn supper, where Mrs. Pritchard's acting was
specially remembered, Mrs. Siddons was transcendent, whether
in the derision by which she laboured to make Macbeth play
the host, or in her royal courtesy in soothing, and, finally,
dismissing the guests. The added burden of acting exacted
by the responsibility of her theory, that Lady Macbeth, too,
saw the spectre,1 must have demanded the utmost imagination
and judgment. It is worth knowing that when, after retirement,
Mrs. Siddons used to read the play in public, the speeches
she made most striking were those of Macbeth.2
A part of Professor George Joseph Bell's remarkable notes
(dated 1809, extracted from 'three volumes, lettered "Siddons,"'
and originally printed by permission of his son, Mr. John
Bell, of the Calcutta Bar) on Mrs. Siddons's playing, in
Edinburgh, of Lady Macbeth and other Shakespearean
characters have come down to us, in two articles,3 included
in the posthumous Papers, Literary, Scientific, etc., by Professor
H. C. Fleeming Jenkin ; and, by Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin's
kindness, I am permitted to quote from them here. Professor
Bell's are not alone the notes of a rarely keen spectator, but,
1 In 1794, Kemble, on the authority of Robert Lloyd's *The Actor, banished the
visible form of Banquo's ghost, but reinstated it on a general protest, and the ghost
remained, till Irving unseated it. For an able discussion of Banquo's ghost, see
Les Theatres Anglais, par Georges Bourdon.
2 Diaries of a Lady of Quality (Miss Wynn), edited by Abraham Hayward
(2nd ed.), 104. 1864.
3 Reprinted by permission of the Editors of the Nineteenth Century and
Macmillarts Magazine.
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 121
as their editor remarked, 'written apparently on the spot,
and during the red-hot glow of appreciation/ His method
of record was to annotate, with compressed observations, a
printed copy of the play. Dealing with Macbeth, his intro-
ductory sentence, "Of Lady Macbeth there is not a great
deal in this play, but the wonderful genius of Mrs. Siddons
makes it the whole," is a chapter in itself. In the banquet
scene, at the dispersion of the guests, Professor Bell noted
that she " Descends in great eagerness ; voice almost choked
with anxiety to prevent their questioning ; alarm, hurry, rapid
and convulsive as if afraid Macbeth should tell of the murder
of Duncan." In support of his initial avouchment that a great
player adds very much even to Shakespeare, Mr. Bell noted
how the flagging of Lady Macbeth's spirit, 'the melancholy
and dismal blank beginning to steal' upon her were more
the creation of Mrs. Siddons than of Shakespeare. These
manifestations commenced after the dismissal of the guests
in her two lines,
"Almost at odds with morning, which is which,"
which she made ' Very sorrowful. Quite exhausted,' and
"You lack the season of all natures, sleep,"
which she made 'feeble now, and as if preparing for her last
sickness and final doom.'
Naturally, and as we learn from all reporters, Mrs. Siddons
reserved the profoundest impression of all for the sleep-walking
scene. She has described her preparatory concentration, and
how, when she sat in her Drury Lane dressing-room, striving
to abstract herself from trivial surroundings, .Sheridan came
knocking, and would not be refused, because he wanted to
tell her she would spoil everything if she insisted on setting
down the candlestick, an action contrary to tradition and the
custom of the deceased Mrs. Pritchard. But 1A bas la
tradition!' was as much the rule of Mrs. Siddons as of the
other Madame Sarah, and so the candlestick was set down
that she might the better (to use her own words) ' act over
again the accumulated horrors of her whole conduct,' and the
house was enraptured, and Sheridan converted. We know,
122 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
too, from her Memoranda, how she carried with her from the
stage so overmastering an impression from her great scene
that, to the astonishment of her dresser, she stood, unconsciously,
before the glass, wringing her hands, and repeating
"Here's the smell of the blood still."
And what an imaginative miracle she must have made
of that scene in which the once predominant queen is beheld
wandering, through galleries of hallucinations, doomed, like
her husband, to sleep no more ! Mrs. Siddons's horror-struck
eyes, her ' almost shroud-like clothing,' l her groaning whispers,
her uncanny immobility, even in gesticulating and walking
about, made the audience shudder. " Never moved, sir, never
moved," said Stephen Kemble, at the Garrick Club, when
asked what had been his sister's special ' note ' in the scene.
And yet there was a frightful energy in her way of rubbing
at the damned spot, and it was to obtain this effect she set
down the taper. Apparently, to judge from the following
comments by the Rev. E. Mangin, she again took up the
candle before her exit. He writes in Piozziana that he and
Mrs. Piozzi
" once conversed much on the subject of the manner in which
Mrs. Siddons sought for the taper . . . when Mrs. P. seemed to
think her right ; which, I confess, I did not. The great actress
used, as it were, to feel for the light ; that is, while stalking
backwards, and keeping her eyes glaring on the house : whereas,
I have somewhere read, or heard, that the somnambulist appears
to look steadily at the object in contemplation, and, in fact, sees
it distinctly. It never was my chance to encounter any one
walking in sleep . . . but an ingenious friend of mine, and
intimate with Mrs. Siddons, told me that she once did witness
the fact; and if so, in all likelihood took her lesson for the
splendid scene in question from nature."
In the sleep-walking scene, Professor Bell noted, she entered
suddenly. He would have liked her to enter less suddenly.
" A slower and more interrupted step more natural." " She
advanced rapidly to the table, sets down the light and rubs her
hand, making the action of lifting up water in one hand at
1 Boaden.
V
V
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 123
intervals." Against her final 'Oh, oh, oh!' "this," he notes,
" not a sigh. A convulsive shudder — very horrible. A tone of
imbecility audible in the sigh."
John Wilson, in the character of the Ettrick Shepherd, gives
the best collective impression of Mrs. Siddons in this greatest
scene : —
" ' Onwards she used to come . . . her gran' high straicht-
nosed face, whiter than ashes ... no Sarah Siddons — but just
Leddy Macbeth hersel — though through that melancholy
masquerade o' passion, the spectator aye had a confused
glimmerin' apprehension o' the great actress. . . . But, Lord
safe us ! that hollow, broken-hearted voice, " Out, damned
spot." ... It was a dreadfu' homily yon, sirs ; and wha that
saw't would ever ask whether tragedy or the stage was moral,
purging the soul, as she did, wi' pity and wi} terror ? ' '
Mrs. Siddons died on June 8th, 1831, and, next day, Fanny
Kemble decided to play Lady Macbeth at Covent Garden —
" the Lady Macbeth will never be seen again."
Mrs. Siddons first played Desdemona on March 8th, 1785.
It was the next part she undertook after her conquest of Lady
Macbeth, and her plasticity — within the limits of tragedy — is
symbolised by the observation some one made that, as 'the
gentle lady married to the Moor/ she appeared less tall than in
her previous incarnation. She was a deeply affecting, even a
winning Desdemona, and, as a proof that she was not always
on the high horse, it is worth noting that more than one critic
dwelt on her ' familiar persuasiveness ' in the earlier scenes, just
as, in Romeo and Juliet, Boaden admired her ' artlessness ' with
Lady Capulet and the Nurse. Campbell writes : —
" I never wondered at her in any character so much as in
Desdemona. . . . The first time I saw the great actress represent
Desdemona was at Edinburgh, when I was a very young man.
I had gone into the theatre without a play-bill. I knew not
that she was in the place. I had never seen her before since I
was a child of eight years old ; and, though I ought to have
recognised her from that circumstance, and from her picture,
yet I was for sometime not aware that I was looking at the
tragic Queen. But her exquisite gracefulness, and the emotions
and plaudits of the house, ere long convinced me that she must
I24 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
be some very great actress, — only the notion I had preconceived
of her pride and majesty made me think that ' this soft, sweet
creature, could not be the Siddons' "
Mrs. Siddons was well satisfied with her effect in the part.
" You have no idea how the innocence and playful simplicity of
Desdemona have laid hold on the hearts of the people," she
wrote to the Whalleys. " I am very much flattered by this, as
nobody ever has done anything with that character before."
'D. L. April 30 [1785] For bt. of Mrs. Siddons. As You
Like It.' l In the earlier provincial period, Rosalind had been a
favourite character of Mrs. Siddons's, but it did nothing for her
now established fame ; she blundered, indeed, in undertaking it.
With the consciousness of great power and practice, performers
in every art are too often led to think everything possible to
their efforts. Rosalind's whimsical and pensive raillery is what
Boaden calls sober comedy, and contains no touch of the farcical
for which Mrs. Siddons would have been totally unfitted, that
being 'not her nature/ but Rosalind's essential airiness, the
wohlgeboren comedy element, was almost equally outside Mrs.
Siddons's compass. Colman called her, in comedy, a frisking
Gog, and the better-bred Charles Young, speaking particularly
of her Rosalind, said —
" it wanted neither playfulness nor feminine softness ; but it
was totally without archness, not because she did not properly
conceive it — but how could such a countenance be arch ? "
Even so devout an admirer as the Rt. Hon. William
Windham was relatively lukewarm as to Rosalind. On June
7th, 1786, he entered in his Diary — " Mrs. Siddons did * Rosalind '
much better than the first time, but . . . there is a want of
hilarity in it ; it is just, but not easy. The highest praise that
can be given to her comedy is, that it is the perfection of art ;
but her tragedy is the perfection of nature." 2
In 'assuming the male habit,' as Rosalind, she was too
prudish for anything. Her beautiful stage figure was disguised
by 'an ambiguous vestment that seemed neither male nor
female,' and some one observed that she walked about as little
1 Genest.
2 Cf. Fanny Burney on Mrs. Siddons's Rosalind, Diary of Madame D'Arblay,
iv. 309, 1904-05.
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 125
as possible. With reference to a later ' page's ' dress, she wrote
characteristically to William Hamilton, as follows : —
" Mrs. Siddons would be extremely obliged to Mr. Hamilton,
if he would be so good as to make her a slight sketch for a
boy's dress, to conceal the person as much as possible."
The newspapers ridiculed the Rosalind 'vestment/ and
fairly, for she played the part from choice, and it was her duty
to dress it naturally. On all occasions, she was ultra-nice as to
' the limits ' (to quote Punch 's Frenchman) ' of her propriety.1
Though I have come upon no written notice of the part, I
have seen a small print of" c Mrs. Siddons in Princess Katherine '
King Henry V. Act V. Scene 2. ' Is it possible dat I should
love the Enemy of France ? ' Burney deltf Thornthwaite Sculp.
Printed for J. Bell. British Library, Strand, London, Dec. 6th
1785." In many an outrageously bad portrait, engraved
for the Ladys Magazine, the European Magazine, etc., Mrs.
Siddons,. in one or another well-known tragedy part, is recog-
nisable alone by the ultra-long nose assigned her.
She first played Portia, after 1782, in London, at John
Kemble's benefit, Drury Lane, April 6th, 1786. In 1788, she
named Portia to Walpole (with whom she was then beginning
to be on visiting terms) as the stock part in which she most
wished him to see her. Perhaps she wished to wipe out ancient
records of her failure in The Merchant of Venice, perhaps she
judged that her interlocutor had a comedy taste. But Horace,
who did not care for the play, and was clear that Mrs. Siddons's
warmest devotees did 'not hold her above a db^zgoddess in
comedy,' expressed a stronger desire to see her as Athenais,
in Nathaniel Lee's Theodosius. " Her scorn," he said, " is
admirable."
It is worth contrasting the view universally taken of her
unfitness for The Merchant of Venice, in her immaturity, in
1775, with what Shelley's second father-in-law had to say
about her acting, in her prime, of the scenes in the play we
should least associate with Siddons genius. Naturally, to
worship the risen sun is easier than to discern streaks of dawn.
Of the way in which, in Act V., she chaffed Bassanio as to
the missing ring, Godwin wrote : —
" There was something inexpressibly delightful in beholding
126 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
a woman of her general majesty condescend for once to become
sportive. There was a marvellous grace in her mode of doing
this; and her demure and queen-like smile, when, appearing
to be most in earnest, she was really most in jest, gave her a
loveliness, that it would be in vain for me to endeavour to find
words to express."
Though she never played Beatrice, in Much Ado about
Nothing, in London, she had played the part, in 1779, in
Bath, and, in August, 1795, Miss Seward wrote to Whalley,
after seeing her go through some of her Shakespearean parts
in Birmingham, " O, Mr. Whalley, what an enchanting Beatrice
she is ! "
As Ophelia (May I5th, 1786), which Mrs. Siddons performed
once only, there could be no danger of her knowing only her
own ' lengths ' — as was said of Mrs. Pritchard's Lady Macbeth,
for, as we have seen, she had long ago performed the tragedy's
title-role, never re-acted by her in London. She, also, sometimes
played — not, in London, till April 29th, 1796 — its premier
female part, the Queen. We read, and can believe, that as
piteous Ophelia she was no mere dishevelled ballad-singer, but
made the utmost of the character, and gave peculiar tragic
power to the c rue for you ' addressed to Queen Gertrude.
Earlier in the scene, her look and gesture so electrified the
Queen, when she seized her arm, that the startled lady, Mrs.
Hopkins, old stager though she was, forgot her words. Players,
as we saw in the case of Holman and the elder Macready,
remain, in spite of inurement, impressible creatures.
Ophelia being a short part, Mrs. Siddons reappeared before
her supporters on the same evening as the Lady, in Dalton and
Colman's arrangement of Comus. Crabb Robinson found that
' she spoke in too tragic a tone for the situation and character.'
It was the only time in his life he saw her without pleasure.
Even she could make of a part so undramatic nothing more
than a recitation, so far comparable to Collins's Ode on the
Passions, which she gave after King Henry the Eighth^ on
March 26th, 1792, and Robert Merry's Britannia's Ode, which
she several times recited, on George Ill's restoration to sanity
in 1789, dressed as Britannia, and seating herself, at the close,
in the attitude of ' La Belle Stuart ' on the penny.
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 127
Turning to Boaden for his notice of Imogen, first essayed by
Mrs. Siddons for her earlier benefit in 1787 (January 29th),
we find him heavily rapturous. It is doubtful, all the same,
whether she made the part saisissant. Imogen is handicapped
by her story, for, without venturing so far as to term Cymbeline
— but for Imogen — one of Shakespeare's failures, it may be
permitted to call to mind that Matthew Arnold styled it (in
conversation) ' an odd, broken-backed sort of a thing.'
It might have been expected that Shakespeare's great filial
part, Cordelia, a character more hallowed, and more human,
than Isabella, would have appealed both to Mrs. Siddons's
taste and genius. Campbell, however, relates that she spoke
of it to him as 'a secondary part,' and said she should not
have played it but for strengthening her brother's Lear. It is
to be feared that even Mrs. Siddons estimated a part largely
by the number of its entrances. I can find no adequate notices
of her Cordelia. She first played it for her benefit of
January 2ist, 1788. The part had never been popular with
eigteenth-century people. They held it 'a character of no
great power.' Mrs. Siddons's Cordelia, it should be remem-
bered, was the degenerate princess of Nahum Tate (of Messrs.
Tate and Brady, Dry Psalters).
Descending to a lower platform, Mrs. Siddons acted, at
Kemble's benefit, on March I3th, 1788, Katharine, in Garrick's
condensation of The Taming of the Shrew, but she made little
impression as the too easily subdued termagant. Of what
great impression is the part, indeed, capable?
For her own benefit, May 5th, 1788, All for Love, Dryden's
noble imitation of Antony and Cleopatra, was revived, with
Mrs. Siddons as the heroine Byron calls * coquettish to the last,
as well with the asp as with Antony.' Once or twice, Kemble
asked her to play Shakespeare's Cleopatra, but, for what
Genest thought 'a very foolish reason,' she always declined.
Her reason was, at least, a characteristic one, viz., that
she should hate herself if she should play the part as it ought
to be played.
When Johnson, in his historic interview with her, asked
her * which of Shakespeare's characters she was most pleased
with,' she answered that ' she thought the character of Catherine
128 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
in Henry the Eighth the most natural,' and the Sage coincided.
With her assumption of Shakespeare's last-written female part,
on November 25th, 1788, we first feel conscious of her increas-
ing suitability for forceful and magnanimous, in contradistinction
to tender and dependent, characters. Physical, as well as
mental, maturity is becoming, indeed, necessary to Queen
Katharine, who was nearly fifty, as much as to Volumnia, the
mother of a man. Yet, taking Mrs. Siddons's Shakespearean
parts chronologically, it will be observed that she played
these two before her first appearance, in London, as Juliet.
Her embodiment of Queen Katharine was no less superb
than her moral rendering of the character. Much of her awe
and majesty, something of her fire, are preserved in George
Henry Harlow's velvety piece of painting, The Court for the
trial of Queen Katharine, and Genest says that a person who
had never seen Mrs. Siddons would form, from this portrait,
a better idea of her figure, face, and manner than from any
description.
We may compare with what Campbell and every other
competent reporter had to say of the enlightenment she shed
on Shakespeare Erskine's experto crede pronouncement that her
speeches were a school for orators. In Act I. of King Henry
the Eighth, where the examination of Buckingham's surveyor
takes place, nothing finer was ever seen on the stage than her
judge-like solemnity when she interrupted Wolsey's instrument
in his schooled charge against Buckingham.
''Take good heed
You charge not in your spleen a noble person,
And spoil your nobler soul ! I say, take heed "
Since the Portia of her immaturity, she had never had
such an opportunity for what our forefathers called level
declamation as in Katharine's Trial. Here she originated a
magnificent piece of business in distinguishing, by her gesture,
pause, and emphasis, between Campeius and Wolsey —
Campeius. — "It's fit ... their arguments
Be now produc'd and heard.
Q. Kath. — Lord cardinal, —
To you I speak.
WoL — Your pleasure, madam?"
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 129
When the legate rises, noted Professor Bell —
"... she turns from him impatiently ; then makes a sweet
bow of apology, but dignified. Then to Wolsey, turned and
looking from him, with her hand pointing back to him, in a
voice of thunder, 'to you I speak.' This too loud perhaps;
you must recollect her insulted dignity and impatience of
spirit before fully sympathising with it."
The scene where the two churchmen find the Queen
among her ladies gave scope for all Mrs. Siddons's intel-
lectuality in acting. Out of her realisation of the just-
minded, long-enduring Queen's penetration in seeing the
snare the Cardinals had laid, she reconstructed one of the
most bracing of Shakespeare's scenes, in all its poignancy.
The following description, quoted by Campbell, of
Katharine's death-scene is from the pen of James Ballantyne.
We find from it that, here, again, Mrs. Siddons became the
uncompromising realist she was wont to be in scenes of
gradual death : —
"... Through her feeble frame and the death-stricken ex-
pression of her features, she displayed that morbid fretfulness of
look, that restless desire of changing place and position, which
frequently attends death. She sought relief from the irrita-
bility of illness by often shifting her situation in her chair;
having the pillows against which she was propped every
now and then removed and re-adjusted ; bending forward
and sustaining herself, while speaking, by the pressure of
her hands upon her knees ; and playing amongst her drapery
with restless and uneasy fingers." l
Another character in which Mrs. Siddons collaborated
with Shakespeare was Volumnia in Coriolanus. She first
played the part on February 7th, 1789, and it at once
became one of her finest. Twenty-two years later, when
she was playing it — still, to her brother's famous Coriolanus
1 Campbell, ii. 149-50. I have, to my regret, been unable to trace an existent
copy of the book quoted, viz., Dramatic Characters of Mrs. Siddons, Edinburgh,
1812. It consisted of criticisms, most of which had appeared in Ballantyne's
the Edinburgh Evening Courant, and were here reprinted, ' by the express wish of
Mrs. Siddons.' Ballantyne (not D. Terry, as Campbell thought) himself wrote the
Courant' 's dramatic criticism, and was referred to by the Shepherd, in ' Noctes, No. 32,
as 'the best theatrical creetic in EmbroV
9
130 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
— in her farewell performances at Covent Garden, Lawrence
wrote to Joseph Farington, R.A., " The Town is fashionably
and I had almost said rationally mad after it." l
An actress whose physique had become unfit for youthful
parts might naturally decline on Volumnia, but this was not
the case with Mrs. Siddons, for she made her first triumph
in the part at thirty-three, when, complains Genest, her
dissidence from Wofifington's self-denying practice of aging
her face made her appear Coriolanus's sister.
The very name, ' Volumnia/ seems to express Mrs. Siddons.
She was the one actress who can ever have approached in
outward resemblance to a correspondence with the august
image used by Coriolanus —
" My mother bows ;
As if Olympus to a molehill should
In supplication nod."
Her noble form, with what Hazlitt called its ' decided,
sweeping majesty,' seemed the natural mould for the magni-
tude and elevation of the sentiments Volumnia utters. She
did not need, like Harvard, to study her attitudes between
six looking-glasses, it was enough to feel the passion, and,
because she was a sublime actress, the action followed. Her
Roman matron was herself, and thus she would have desired
to act had the play been reality.
The best description ever given of an isolated piece of
acting relates to her Volumnia, and, since ' there's none cares,
like a fellow of the craft,' it proceeds, as we might expect,
from an actor. Julian Young recalled, as follows, Charles
Young's impression of her exultant pantomime, in Act II.,
when her son returns to Rome ' Coriolanus ' : —
"... instead of dropping each foot, at equi-distance . . .
in cadence subservient to the orchestra . . . with head erect,
and hands pressed firmly to her bosom, as if to repress by
manual force its triumphant swellings, she towered above all
around her, and almost reeled across the stage ; her very
soul, as it were, dilating and rioting in its exultation, until
her action lost all grace, and, yet, became so true to nature,
1 Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag, 86.
HER INTERPRETATION OF SHAKESPEARE 131
so picturesque, and so descriptive, that, pit and gallery sprang
to their feet, electrified by the transcendent execution of the
conception."
Juliet, on our stage, like Phedre in France, is traditionally
regarded as the touchstone of an actress's tragic powers, and
yet how rarely has an actress established her fame by her
Juliet ! There was no general enthusiasm over the part when
Mrs. Siddons first assumed it for her benefit night, May nth,
1789, and she never repeated it. Leigh Hunt found that she
was too stately and self-subdued for 'the amatory pathetic.'
Any ascendancy over her of a mother or a cackling nurse
seemed preposterous, and the thoughtful strength of her features
alone contradicted a passion 'too rash, too unadvis'd, too
sudden.' Compared with Shakespeare's, her vision of love
was middle-aged, it was in tune with a sublimated version
of ' John Anderson, my Jo, John.' Her faithful knight, Boaden,
tried to champion her by depreciating Juliet, whose ardency
he called " entirely without dignity : it springs up, like the
mushroom, in a night, and its flavour is earthy."
As, during the tragedy's progress, the serious interest of
risk and calamity deepened, Mrs. Siddons responded to its
call. In her forecast of the horrors awaiting her in the
Capulet monument, she was, at last, and then only, truly herself
— vivid, terrific, and original.
One of the minor Shakespearean queens, Elizabeth,
widow of Edward IV, was originally performed by her, on
February 7th, 1792, to her brother's Richard III, but there
was little to be made out of the character. She could have
done more with her early part, Lady Anne, or with Queen
Margaret.
It is interesting to know that Hermione, first played on
March 25th, 1802, a decade before her retirement, was the
last of her new characters, whether in or out of Shakespeare.
In 1785, she had written to Whalley, " I am going to under-
take your adored Hermione this winter. You know I was
always afraid of her ..." but the Hermione spoken of was,
most probably, Hermione in Philips's Distressed Mother^ which
she played for her benefit, March 4th, 1786.
As for the greater Hermione, she could not have made a
132 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
better choice for her waning maturity, in 1802, than this wife
and mother part, and she was nobly imaginative in it. As
Boaden rightly says, it would be absurd to suppose that
characters like Belvidera and Southerne's Isabella proved as
delightful to audiences in Mrs. Siddons's autumn as they had
been in her April, but her Constance, Lady Macbeth, Hermione,
and Volumnia were no less beautiful and compelling in her
final season than when first she impersonated them. In her
artistic career there was no solution of continuity; only, her
favourite range of characters gradually settled among women
imagined by Shakespeare as net mezzo del cammin.
To think of the incalculable extension of Shakespeare's
influence due to Mrs. Siddons is to be reminded of the
pretty lines M. Rostand recited to her dramatic namesake
on December 9th, 1896 —
" Tu sais bien, Sarah, que quelquefois
Tu sens furtivement se poser, quand tu joues,
Les levres de Shakespeare aux bagucs de tes doigts" 1
1 Cf. Tennyson, To W. C. Macready, 1851—
" Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye
Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee."
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE
LITTLE is seen of Roger Kemble after the emergence
of Mrs. Siddons and John. A few glimpses given by
Boaden indicate that the patriarch did not lack what
Mr. H. B. Irving (writing in the Fortnightly Review \ August
1906) aptly termed the 'rather Crummies-like solemnity' of
the entire family. In 1788, 'Kemble Senior' played, 'very
well,' in The Miller of Mansfield at the Haymarket, at the
benefit of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stephen Kemble. He
was sixty-seven, and it was his metropolitan debut, so
advertised. The fact that the old man received a cheque for
£19, 5s., signed by Richard Peake, the Drury Lane treasurer,
on * N ' account, and Genest's report of a banker's refusing him,
during the winter of 1786, a share in some beneficent fund
lodged in his hands, on the ground that * he could not con-
sider the father of Mrs. Siddons, who was making so much
money, as a fit object of charity/ do not, necessarily, prove
neglect on the part of Roger's wealthier children. York
Herald contributes the fact that, "in 1792, Arms, with the
crest of a Boar's head between a branch of laurel and one
of palm was granted to Roger Kemble of Kentish Town "
(cf. R. K.'s designation in pedigree, p. 5). During his last
years, Roger appears to have lived with the John Kembles, at
89 Great Russell Street, and from there he was buried. At the
time of his death, John was holidaying in Madrid, whence
he wrote to Charles : —
" Nothing in my opinion could be better judged than
your interring my poor father without the least affectation of
any parade, and I agree with you entirely, that his remains
should be protected by a simple stone; but I beg that in
134 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
the plain memorial inscribed on it his age may be men-
tioned. Long life implies virtuous habits, and they are real
honours."
Creditable platitudes came naturally to every member of
the House of Kemble. With more nature, the traveller had
written, on the previous day : —
" How in vain have I delighted myself in thousands of
inconvenient occurrences on this journey, with the thought of
contemplating my father's cautious incredulity while I related
them to him ! "
As we have already found, John Kemble by no means
sprang into his position of being the ' top-tragedian ' of the day
without a stern probationary period. But, beyond and * back of
the gentleman's education he had received at Sedgeley Park
and the Douai College, the young actor possessed ambition,
ability, and will. On September 3Oth, 1783, he made his
debut, as Hamlet, at Drury Lane, thanks to Mrs. Siddons's
influence, and we read that, on his appearing, every one
murmured, ' How very like his sister ! ' To realise the strong
resemblance, we have but to turn to Lawrence's portrait of
him, as Hamlet, in his fur and feathers, ruminatory, handling
Yorick's skull, and poised (as a child might think) on the
top of a globe, like Moses on Pisgah. Kemble's height and
size, said Scott, reviewing Boaden's Life of Kemble, were
"on a scale suited for the stage, and almost too large for a
private apartment." The English Theatre, on the other hand,
describing his early performances, found — in the quaint style
of the period — that "he wants that fullness of chest and
abdomen which gives a finished appearance."
Still, as in Henderson's time, 'Gentleman Smith' was in
possession of the best tragedy parts at Drury Lane, and
more than two months elapsed before Kemble and Mrs.
Siddons — in obedience to the King and Queen's desire — were
seen together in parts of equal consequence. Smith's retire-
ment in 1788, synchronising with Kemble's elevation to the
stage management, cleared the field, and, thenceforth, Kemble
almost invariably supported his sister.
It might have been imagined that she would find it
insipid and difficult to act with such a near relation, and
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 135
one inclines to think that the brother and sister, and, what
is commoner, the husband and wife combination produces,
in the audience, some diminution of illusion, a suggestion
corroborated by the fact that few married couples appear
on programmes under one surname. Fanny Kemble, who
constantly acted in tragedies with Charles Kemble, found the
personal relation a painful element, the sight of his anguish
or displeasure invariably bringing him before her as her
father, and not in the part he was playing. But the greatest
member of the family so forgot everyday life in her part
that she was absolutely unhampered, and, during her earlier
and middle years at Drury Lane, she could not have found
another tragic actor as competent as John.
The members of clan Kemble — who were ever seeking to
turn their theatre, whether Drury Lane or Covent Garden,
into a family concern — rarely permitted themselves the luxury
of home criticism. Once, however, Mrs. Siddons (in 1805)
wrote of John's stage lovemaking as outsiders spoke of it : —
" I do not like to play Belvidera to John's Jaffier so well as
I shall when Charles has the part: John is too cold — too
formal, and does not seem to put himself into the character :
his sensibilities are not as acute as they ought to be for the
part of a lover: Charles, in other characters far inferior to
John, will play better in Jaffier — I mean to my liking. We
have rehearsed it."
Her determined alternative, not of Cooke, nor Johnston,
nor Brunton, but 'Charles/ reminds one, in its spirit, of
Stevenson's Brothers of Cauldstaneslap. They haed a gude
pride o' themsers, and the Kembles were like them. Mrs.
Inchbald somewhere animadverts on the 'too conscious
elevation * of the whole Kemble group.
John Kemble's speciality lay in all that was eloquent and
grandiloquent in tragedy. He was a fine actor, not a great
actor, less * born' than his sister, more 'made.' In 1783, before
he played Hamlet, he copied out the part forty times; like
Mrs. Siddons, he wrote an analysis of the character of Macbeth
— Macbeth Reconsidered (1786; enlarged, in 1817, into Macbeth
and King Richard the Third] ; if ever he felt he had played
beneath his powers, he would say, disgustedly, " I acted to-
136 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
night THIRTY SHILLINGS a week." By reason of his
own stately cast of mind, he made a superb Roman, and,
though both Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt thought Penruddock in
Cumberland's The Wheel of Fortune his best impersonation,
general tradition sides with Macready in associating him most
closely with the high-reared class pride of Coriolanus. His
strength (like Zola's in fiction) lay !in working out a character
in the grip of a fixed idea. Then, he would elaborate the
author's meaning, leaving nothing to chance, nothing to the
inspiration of the moment, till, sometimes, the intensity of
the grapple set his imagination aglow, and he created a part
as convincingly alive as Washington Irving says his Zanga
was, in Young's Revenge. " He gave," said Hazlitt, " the
deepest interest to the uninterrupted progress of individual
feeling." " He is great," said Scott, " in those parts where
character is tinged by some acquired and systematic habit, like
stoicism or misanthropy."
To a typical extent, he was a classic, as opposed to an
impressionist, actor. Forgetting Garrick, he reverted to Quin's
methods, exactly as, forgetting him, Kean was to revert to
Garrick's. Kemble thought out the flexure of every finger.
In his earnestness, he was humble enough to inquire
searchingly of Mrs. Inchbald how Henderson had played Sir
Giles Overreach in Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts.
". . . I shall be uneasy if I have not an idea of his dress,
even to the shape of his buckles, and what rings he wears on
his hands."
Except at rare intervals, Kemble lacked power to let
himself go. Too often, people could smell the machine oil.
In consequence of too great solicitude, his acting sometimes
failed to produce the effect intended ; " for very love of self
himself he slew," as, when, in playing Coriolanus, he over-
laboured the superciliousness and nonchalance till Hazlitt was
reminded of the unaccountably abstracted air, contracted
eyebrows, and suspended chin of a person about to sneeze.
Combined with perfect enunciation, the ' weighty sense,'
which, says Lamb, Kemble put into every line was in itself
an attraction to the judicious, while it gave the unskilful a
vague conviction of personal dignity in the actor. Kemble
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 137
showed that he believed in things poetic and ideal, and he
induced audiences to partake his faith and taste. He may
possibly have owed some of his solemnity of manner to his
priestly training, but his aims were high, and, as an actor-
manager, he, too, with Garrick and Macready, honestly merited
Tennyson's tribute to the three, that they
"made a nation purer through their art."
Actors, as stage history so often reminds us, are ignorant
of their weak side. Kemble had a strong inclination to play
Charles Surface. He only gave Sheridan the opportunity to
tell him, after he had done so, that he had ' entirely executed
his design/ A player in whose acting there was, according
to Hazlitt, ' neither variableness nor shadow of turning,' whose
pauses Sheridan recommended should be filled up with music,
was not likely to excel in light comedy, and we may well
believe his friend, John Taylor's, statement —
' ' Whene'er he tries the airy and the gay,
Judgment, not genius, marks the cold essay."
In Kemble's opinion, knowledge and study, if only
profound enough, qualified their possessor equally for comedy
and tragedy. Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Mrs. Maclean
Clephane, best summed up, for and against, the art of his
friend, ' King John/ as he sometimes called him, or (quoting
his own Claud Halcro) * glorious John.' " He is," wrote Scott,
"a lordly vessel, goodly and magnificent, when going large
before the wind, but wanting the facility to go ' ready
about.' "
If Kemble had not been an actor, he might have become
a more prominent philologist than his nephew and namesake,
Charles's elder son. He overlaid several Shakespearean
passages with ingenious 'readings,' regarding the Tightness
of which, however fantastic, he remained inflexible. He had
a liking for christening characters to whom Shakespeare and
other dramatists had given no individual names. He was
born for those textual niceties which, as a rule, are un-
profitable on the stage because they tend to subordinate the
whole to a part. Commercially unprofitable one, at least, of
138 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
his pedantries was not. This was the archaistic pronunciation
of ' aches ' as ' aitches ' in The Tempest —
"Fill all thy bones with aches"—
for a zealous public was, Genest states, so intrigut by the
innovation that the piece lived several nights longer than
Thomas Harris, then patentee of Covent Garden, had
anticipated, and caused Cooke, who, one night, played Prospero,
to draw as well as Kemble, because people wanted to hear
how he would manage the critical lines. He left them out.
Mrs. Siddons's son Henry's daughter, Mrs. Mair, states, in
Recollections of the Past, that Kemble would never allow the
Henry Siddons children to say ' funny.' 1 "A wrong word,
or one wrongly pronounced, affected him as a wrong note
in music affects a musician." Every one recollects the story,
included in Coleridge's Table Talk, of how Kemble was
discoursing in his measured manner after dinner at Lord
Guildford's, when the servant announced his carriage : —
" He nodded, and went on. The announcement took place
twice afterwards ; Kemble each time nodding his head a
little more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for
the fourth time, the servant entered, and said, ' Mrs. Kemble
says, sir, she has the rheumatzj*?, and cannot stay.' * Add ism \ '
dropped John, in a parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his
harangue."
A list of his linguistic affectations is given in the appendix to
Leigh Hunt's Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres.
He called 'fastidious/ 'fastijjus/ and ' Aufidius,' 'Aufijjus.' He
said ' To air is human.' With him, ' pierces ' became ' purses,'
' virtue ' and ' merchant/ * varchue ' and ' marchant.' How he
justified some of the pronunciations he insisted on passes
understanding. His ' Room ' and ' goold/ however, were no
more than the pronunciation traditional, up till comparatively
recently, in many old English families. So did Landor
pronounce ' Rome ' and ' gold.1
In October, 1788, Kemble succeeded Tom King as
1 John Kemble had no children. A propos, Emery thus criticised his acting :
" He has no natur ; not a bit. But then he never wur the feyther of a child, and
that accounts for it."
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 139
Drury Lane's Manager, under Sheridan and his co-proprietors.
Sheridan's co-proprietors were sleeping partners, and their
combined interest only amounted to half the total. King
retired in disgust. He had never been given a free hand,
even so far as to order ' a yard of copper lace ' on a costume.
Kemble entered upon his new office with enthusiasm. As
yet, he did not know his Sheridan.
While credit permitted, he seems to have been empowered
to run the theatre according to his views. In what would
nowadays be thought a palaeolithic way, he liked to see
classics picturesquely mounted, and, when he played Brutus
or Coriolanus, he even aimed — in spite of skimpy togas —
at something doing duty for an 'archaeological revival.' He
was, however gropingly, the forerunner of Charles Kean,
and first of the moderns.
Garrick's Drury, architecturally condemned, was pulled
down in 1791, and Sheridan's new theatre, double the size,
capable of holding 361 1 people, vast, impracticable, unfinished,
was opened in 1794. Shortly after, Mrs. Siddons described
the new building — Henry Holland's — as 'a wilderness of a
place.' She was finding it necessary to magnify and under-
line gestures, voice, and facial expression to suit it. Before
the closing of the earlier house, Kemble presented The
Tempest, with, according to contemporary notions, 'extra-
ordinary magnificence.'
Among serious critics there was much head-shaking over
Kemble's zeal for
"those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see."
Boaden says the actors, as a matter of course, foresaw
that spectacular staging would subordinate the importance
and prestige of acting. One wonders what they would have
said in a day when Shakespeare is deemed scarcely pre-
sentable unless helped out with lurid sunsets, classic
architecture, running waterfalls, horses, a donkey, or a wolf-
hound, when in vain Mr. Gordon Craig seeks to persuade a
coarsened public that the thing needful is not scenery, but
a scene, suggestive, undiverting, designed, not to ' give reality '
— for theatrical illusion can only be established through
140 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
feeling — but to spare long passages of description. If we
could see Mrs. Siddons acting in a bare hall, who can
suppose but that, in three minutes, we should be heedless
of the absence of 'scenery'? Boaden unhesitatingly states —
to moderns the remark must seem the acme of quaintness
— that Kemble and his sister never proved themselves such
transcendent actors as when they made good their ascendancy
over " accompaniments that would have rendered feebler
merits contemptible."
The Sheridan-Kemble-Siddons constellation may have
been, as was said, 'the greatest variety of talent ever seen
combined into one dramatic company/ but, like Lord
Grenville's All the Talents, it did not contain the elements
of permanence. In 1796, sickened with Sheridan's non-
payments and evasions, and the consequent exasperation
and disorder behind the curtain, Kemble threw up his
Managership, and was succeeded in it by Wroughton, who,
in 1798, on his intended retirement from the stage, gave
place to James Aickin. For the 1800-1 season, Kemble
again took up managerial duties, in the idea of purchasing,
together with Mrs. Siddons, into the property, but, owing
to some uncertainty in the title, the negotiations came to
nothing. Kemble, instead, purchased, in 1802, a sixth share
(William Lewis, the comedian's) of Covent Garden Theatre,
paying, with the help of his friend, Heathcote, £10,000
down towards the £23,000 he was to be charged for it. He
took a year's holiday for foreign travel between his Drury
Lane period and his new responsibilities. At the time of
his leaving Drury Lane, his salary, as actor and Manager,
was, nominally, £56, 143. a week. At Covent Garden, it
was, independently of his proprietary interest, £36 a week.
Both Kemble and Mrs. Siddons now definitively quitted
the House of Garrick, and, from the autumn of 1803 onwards,
made Covent Garden their habitat, till each, in turn, bade
farewell to the public from its boards. Kemble's income from
Covent Garden, including his proprietary share, acting, and
management, has been estimated as £2500 per annum. I
have not been able to ascertain whether Mrs. Siddons, before
quitting Drury Lane, received all her much-mentioned arrears
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 141
of pay from Sheridan. Into that second ' drowning gulph,'
Covent Garden Theatre, she now put no capital, though,
when Kemble went into the proprietorship, Mr. Siddons was,
at first, mentioned, as likely to buy an additional share.
The curse of Sheridan seemed to follow Kemble from
t'other house, for, when, on September 2Oth, 1808, Covent
Garden Theatre became 'well alight,5 and, in under three
hours, the interior was destroyed, with all its contents,
including the jewels and lace — fine, curious, unreplaceable —
which Mrs. Siddons had been collecting for thirty years,1
the cause of the fire was believed to have been the smouldering
wadding of a musket, let off in Sheridan's Pizarro. The loss
of property was estimated at ;£i 50,000. Kemble rebuilt his
house in less than a year, the company acting during the
interim, first, at the Opera House — then called 'the King's
Theatre ' — and, after, at the Haymarket Theatre.
Kemble made a justifiable choice when he married the
widow Brereton, nee Priscilla Hopkins. She was an active,
garrulous little woman — whose ' Priscilla ' her husband shortened
into 'Pop,' and the late Mrs. Mair remembered that, in 1822,
the ever laborious John could not start on a short Italian tour
without studying grammar, dictionary, Dante, and Tasso
beforehand, with the result that grammarless ' Pop ' made
the waiters understand when he could do nothing.
Aunt John, as the younger generation called her, was
addicted to high society, and advantageously elated in it.
While Kemble was abroad, during the hiatus between Drury
Lane and Covent Garden (1802-3), she wrote from Lord
Abercorn's, Stanmore Priory, to her husband's old 'flirt/
Mrs. Inchbald : —
" Our Friday Evening was most splendid and to me in
every way triumphant . . . the Prince [of Wales] . . . would not
allow me to stand and talked in the most familiar manner
and the most friendly for an Hour all this in presence of
my friend Sheridan. Sheridan was very civil, and so was I. ...
1 Among the lace was a point veil, nearly five yards long, that had been, Mrs.
Siddons told Lady Harcourt, * a toilette of the poor Queen of France and worth
over a thousand pounds, but that's the least regret, it was so interesting ! ' — Undated
letter, from Mrs. Siddons to Lady Harcourt, exhibited in the Guelph Exhibition.
142 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Sheridan is little-minded enough to be vexed at seeing any
of his performers admitted into the society he lives with. . . .
I think the Houses I have been in during my Husband's
absence has been most creditable and serviceable to him as
he has been constantly kept before the eyes of the great world,
passages in his Letters talked of, etc." l
The Kembles were even more intimate than Mrs. Siddons
with the Greatheeds. In the library at Guy's Cliffe is a
portrait of Mrs. Kemble, representing a buxom, decolletee
lady in brown gown and scarlet turban. It was painted by
the son of the house, Bertie (ll), whose own head — by himself
— artistic, ardent-looking, with abundant hair, high collar,
and voluminous necktie, hangs in the same room.
Like Mrs. Siddons, ' Coriolanus,' in private life, could not
always forget he was off the stage. He, too, had the trick of
talking in blank verse, and the late Rev. C. E. Bodham Donne,
whose first wife was Kemble's great-niece, used to tell a story
of the actor's entering an umbrella-shop, picking out a walking-
stick, and saying to the shopman —
" This likes me well. The cost ? the cost ? "
If, away from the theatre, he was not guiltless of posing
— what tragedy actor ever was? — his manner was by no
means all stage buckram. He was a kind, worthy, simple-
hearted man, and he lived (to use Lamb's phrase concerning
him) in familiar habits with half the well-known intellects of
his day. The idea of paying his footing, a la Garrick, with
' turns,' recitations, or any other parlour tricks, was abhorrent
to him. Where he went, he went as a gentleman like the
others, never as the actor, off duty, but glad to be amusing.
Lady Morgan's Book of the Boudoir gives a droll glimpse of
him at a party at Lady Cork's in 1810. 'The Wild Irish
Girl,' Sydney Owenson — she did not marry Sir Charles
Morgan till 1812 — was the new pet lioness. Kemble arrived
when people were supping : —
" Mr. Kemble was evidently much pre-occupied and a
little exalted. . . . He was seated vis-a-vis, and had repeatedly
stretched his arm across the table for the purpose, as I
1 The original letter, from which I quote, is in the Forster Collection, Victoria
and Albert Museum.
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 143
supposed, of helping himself to some boar's head in jelly.
Alas ! . . . my head happened to be the object which fixed
his attention, which, being a true Irish cathah head, dark,
cropped, and curly, struck him as a particularly well
organized Brutus, and better than any in his repertoire of
theatrical perukes. Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed
purpose, he actually struck his claws in my locks, and,
addressing me in the deepest sepulchral tones, asked, 'Little
girl, where did you buy your wig ? ' '
The best thing Kemble ever said was his remark on
Zoffany's picture of Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard in Macbeth
that it really represented the butler and housekeeper quarrel-
ling over the carving-knives. Again, he was funny — to use
the word he prohibited — when he prefaced a comic song by
saying it was a favourite with one of the first comic singers
of the day, Mrs. Siddons. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Siddons
(whom her official biographer terms 'a passable vocalist')
would sometimes indulge a select circle with Billy Taylor,
rendered in a style of exaggerated solemnity.
In convivial hours, which, fortunately, did not occur
most nights, for he observed the Baron of Bradwardine's
distinction between ebrius and ebriosus, Kemble drank,
solemnly, as became an earnest tragedian, but to a degree
that sometimes resulted in his slipping under the table.
His prime of life was circ. 1800, and he might have urged
the plea of the contemporary Orkney clergyman, called to
reply to a charge of inebriety, "Reverend Moderator, I do
drink, as other gentlemen do." Campbell told a story of
how, in Paris, he and Kemble, returning from too liberal an
entertainment at Mme de StaeTs, fell discussing, in the
carriage, whether Talma, being an actor, was as well worth
meeting as an author. The argument grew personal, and]
finally, Campbell, in a rage, got out, and walked home. Next
morning, 'with a faint recollection of what had happened/ he
called on the festive John, whom he found just out of bed.
"Ah, my dear friend, I was just sitting down to ask you
to dine with me." " To meet Talma, of course ? " " Come
and see."
Scott loved Kemble for several reasons ; primarily, because
144 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
he was 'a virtuoso like himself/ and, secondarily, because he
was an imaginative and exceptionally cultured actor, and Scott
forgathered with actors whenever he had the chance. It was
at a dinner to William Murray, the actor (Mrs. Henry Siddons's
brother), in 1 827, that he first overtly acknowledged the author-
ship of the Waverley Novels.
When staying at Ashestiel, Kemble was Scott's enfant gate.
Himself drinking ' claret by the pail-ful,' he kept his host up to
an unconscionable hour every night, and, in 1817, not only made
Scott write noble verses for his Edinburgh farewell, but actually
criticised and corrected them till he got them quite to his mind.
It may be remembered (v. p. 33) that, in the early days, when
Mr. Inchbald rode on horseback, Mr. Kemble was taken into
the chaise by the ladies, and, throughout his life, his horseman-
ship left much to be desired. It was by reason of its deficiency
that, in the morning, after his enforcedly deep potations of the
vigil, Scott 'socked it home' on his guest as soon as the
celebrated cavalcade, led by Maida, started for the day's ad-
ventures. Scott, says his son-in-law, used to chuckle, 'with
particular glee/ over the recollection of how, one day, on an
excursion to the vale of Ettrick, the riders, of whom Kemble
was one, were pursued by a bull. " Come, King John/' said
the Laird, " we must even take the water," whereat he and his
daughter plunged into the stream. But Ettrick happened to
be full and turbid, and ' King John/ not liking the prospect,
halted on the bank, and, in his solemn manner, exclaimed —
"The flood is angry, Sheriff,
Methinks I'll get me up into a tree."
Kemble's farewell performances, in 1817 — in March, in
Edinburgh ; in June, in London — were attended by demonstra-
tions of his popularity. He was only sixty, but gout and
increasing asthma were serious warnings, and, equally with his
sister, he was resolved not to outact his popularity. When, on
June 5th, he played Macbeth for the last time (with Mrs. Siddons,
herself retired five years, as his Lady Macbeth), Charles
Kemble, at the close, " received him in his arms, and laid him
gently on the ground, his physical powers being unequal to
further effort." His final London appearance was in Coriolanus>
MRS. SIDDONS'S ONLY PORTRAIT AS LADY MACBETH
JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE 145
on June 23rd. Talma and Tieck were present at this historic
leave-taking, and the latter described it in Dramaturgische
Blatter. Every passage of the play that could be applied to
the circumstances of the evening was seized by the audience.
Four evenings later, a public dinner, presided over by Vassall
Holland, 'nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,' was given in
Kemble's honour, and, for the occasion, Campbell composed
the well-known ' Ode ' — a laudation of the actor and his art —
intended for Charles Young to recite after dinner. Since
Shakespeare's sonnets, nothing more sympathetic has been
written about a player than the second verse of this poem.
Mrs. Siddons thought an unnecessary amount of fuss was
being made over her brother's withdrawal — considerably more
than had been made over hers. " Well, perhaps, in the next
world women will be more valued than they are in this," she
sighed to ' Memory ' Rogers.
Kemble's diminished income and what he called his ' crazy
constitution' alike suggesting residence abroad, he and Mrs.
Kemble settled for three years at Toulouse. Later, and after
a short intervening visit to London, they took what one of the
newspapers termed a ' Helvetic hermitage/ on ' the lake of
Lausanne,' and there, on February 26th, 1823, the final call came,
in the form of apoplexy, to John Kemble. He was ' blooded ' —
in both arms — but nothing could save him. " It is impossible
to describe how he was esteem'd in this place," wrote Mrs.
Kemble, from Lausanne, on March 24th, to Lawrence. The
actor was interred where he died. His statue (in the guise of
Addison's Cato), completed by Hinchliff, but commenced by
Flaxman, stands * in the glorious glooms of Westminster/
Originally placed in the North Transept, it was removed, in
1865, to its more congenial present position, near Campbell's
statue of Mrs. Siddons, in St. Andrew's Chapel.
Kemble's widow settled, first, at Heath Farm, a house of
Lord Essex's, close to Cassiobury Park, and, later, near Guy's
Cliffe, at Leamington.1 To Fanny Kemble's fine-pointed pen
we owe some hints as to her ways at the former residence,
which the letter from Stanmore, quoted above, helps us to
appreciate. To her Aunt John, who was ' not at all superficially
1 At both places, Mrs. Siddons, and her daughter, Cecilia, used to stay with her.
JO
146 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
a vulgar woman/ 'gentility and propriety,' says Mrs. Fanny
Kemble, * were the breath of life.'
When her own hour struck — she outlived her husband
twenty-two years — Priscilla Kemble was buried in the family
vault of the Greatheeds and the Percys.
XI
OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS
AS a rule, the Kembles were unusually slender in youth, and
unusually stout in later life. Mrs. Siddons's second
brother, Stephen Kemble, alone, seems to have begun
badly, if there be any literal truth in the legend that, in 1783,
he being twenty-five, Covent Garden, desirous of engaging ' the
great Mr. Kemble ' from Dublin, got hold of Stephen from Capel
Street, because he was so much bigger than his brother, John,
at Smock Alley. In face, a Kemble, without the Kemble
hauteur^ Stephen, on probation, 'discharged the character' of
Othello, but, says Boaden, with 'nothing of the subtle and
discriminating character of his family.' Nature had been cruel
in loading him with an excess of adipose tissue, but he ought
not to have played Hamlet when he weighed eighteen stone,
and possessed no qualification for the prince beyond being ' fat,
and scant of breath.' A little later, and there were but two
parts performable by him, Henry VIII and FalstafT. The second
he is celebrated for having played — not wittily, nor drolly, but
— without padding. John Taylor, who was his brother-in-law,
alleges, however, that he supported the part 'with a flowing,
manly humour,' and was, generally, anything but contemptible
in characters 'of an open, blunt nature, and requiring a
vehement expression of justice and integrity.'
Stephen married the Desdemona of his London debut,
Elizabeth Satchell. She was a delightful actress, the one
perfect Beggar's Opera Polly since Lavinia Fenton became
Duchess of Bolton. What Mrs. Stephen was on the stage —
' immeasurably far from vulgarity,' yet evincing * nothing of the
world's refinement' — she appears to have been in life. As
a player, she was as superior to her husband as, in a higher
147
148 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
degree, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Siddons, was to hers. But she
faithfully appeared with him, and, though in demand as he
never was, left London with him, when he, periodically, was
'sent down.'
Stephen's figure and want of art suggested Managership as
a likelier walk than acting. Early in 1792, he took the
Edinburgh Theatre Royal, but litigation with the previous
Manager, Jackson, and, simultaneously, with Mrs. Esten, his
competitor for the lesseeship, drove him to another theatre in
Edinburgh, where, in less than a month, Mrs. Esten, through
her influence over the Duke of Hamilton (o mores /) caused his
performances to be prohibited. A year later, Stephen got the
better of the lady, returned to the Theatre Royal, and, by dint
of engaging his distinguished London relatives, and keeping
himself in the background, achieved a success, which
diminished towards 1800, at which date he left Edinburgh.
During 1818-19, he was Manager at Drury Lane, and there
introduced his son, Henry Stephen Kemble, an actor, who, it
was said, possessed the strongest lungs and weakest judgment
of any known performer. Stephen Kemble withdrew from
active service shortly before his death, which took place on
June 5th, 1822, at Durham. He was buried in Durham
Cathedral. Of his daughter, Frances, sometime an actress,
who married Robert Arkwright, a captain in a militia
regiment and a grandson of Sir Richard Arkwright, we get
a picturesque glimpse in Payne Collier's An Old Man's
Diary.
It seems strange that Charles Kemble, the brother of John
and of Mrs. Siddons, should have been alive in 1854, till we
remember that he was eighteen years younger than the former,
and twenty years younger than the latter. On the day he was
born, he became uncle to Mrs. Siddons's year-old elder son,
Henry, to whose son, also a Henry Siddons, Charles's daughter,
Fanny, nearly became engaged. Like other uncles who are of
an age to be their nephews and nieces' cousins, Charles Kemble
was never, except sportively, 'Uncle Charles' to the young
Siddonses. It was ' My Uncle John, and my Mother, and
Charles.'
Charles Kemble started life as a clerk in the Post Office, but
OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS 149
gave up his berth a year after he secured it, and went straight
to the stage. After a two years' novitiate in the provinces,
he first played with his brother and sister at the opening of
Sheridan's new Drury Lane, April 2ist, 1794. He was Malcolm
to their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Like them, he proved an
actor of gradual development, though always weaker than they.
But he was distinguished, invulnerably a gentleman, the most
chivalrous of stage lovers. His delivery must have been de-
lightful. Westland Marston said of his Hamlet, " I had never
imagined there could be so much charm in words as mere
sounds." Playing every part, even FalstafFs, without the least
'charging' — in completely civilised taste — he made an ideal
Cassio, Faulconbridge, Richmond, Laertes, Petruchio, Edgar,
and the very Mercutio Shakespeare drew. Macready's remark
that he was a first-rate actor in second-rate parts is corroborated
by Sir Theodore Martin.1
There had been gossip as to John Kemble never encouraging
a brother near the throne, in plays containing male parts of
equal consequence, but when, in 1820, during his retired years,
his Covent Garden partner, Harris, the chief proprietor, died,
he showed a weightier generosity in assigning to ' Mr. Charles '
his sixth share of the Covent Garden property in jabsolute fee.
The theatre, still embarrassed by its 1809 building debt, was
not doing well, but Charles, naturally, believed prosperity
recoverable. The hope proved unjustified, and the expenses
of the huge theatre well-nigh crushed the second Kemble Atlas
burdened with sustaining them.
Charles's wife, born Maria Teresa de Camp, a Viennese
dancer, a capable actress, and a minor playwright, might have
been 'own sister' to another Viennese dancer, Eva Violette,
afterwards Mrs. Garrick, in that, though sharper tempered, she
was equally virtuous and equally vivacious, while history
associates both — mysteriously — with the Empress Maria
Teresa. Mrs. Charles Kemble retired from the stage in 1819,
twelve years after marriage.
Of the Charles Kembles' four children, the eldest, John
Mitchell Kemble, grew up to be Examiner of Plays and the
erudite author of The Saxons in England. To him, Tennyson,
1 Monographs ; 149, 1906.
ISO THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
in their Cambridge days, addressed the sonnet, To J. M. K.> ' in
itself, a diploma,' said Julian Young.
When, in 1829, Charles Kemble's Management of Covent
Garden had brought him to the verge of bankruptcy, his elder
daughter, Fanny, aged twenty, was the Iphigeneia who came
forward to save her father's credit. Sir Thomas Lawrence, so
well qualified to pronounce, and claiming ' almost a Father's
interest for her,' said she had * eyes and hair like Mrs. Siddons in
her finest time,' that her voice was ' at once sweet and powerful/
and that she was ' blessed with a clear Kemble understanding.'
Still, none but a few enthusiasts maintained that the undoubtedly
gifted girl had caught her aunt's mantle. It was no small thing
that, at the close of her first season, Charles Kemble was able
to pay off £ 1 3,000 of debt.
After three successive seasons, Fanny went with her father
on tour to America, and there married Mr. Pierce Butler, of
Philadelphia, a Southern planter. Her brief return, in 1847, to
the London stage, is a negligible fact in dramatic history. To
the first instalment of her autobiography, Record of a Girlhood —
the best work of her life — a great many persons have owed an
acquaintance they might never otherwise have gained with the
outlook and family life of players of high character.
Charles Kemble's younger daughter, Adelaide, so pro-
foundly admired by Edward Fitzgerald, Lord Leighton, and
Henry Greville, was a singer of rare dramatic power. She
gave up her profession at the end of 1842 — during her second
Covent Garden season — to become the wife of Mr. Edward
John Sartoris. In later life, she published a readable book
called A Week in a French Country House, and two other
volumes of stories. That she was an impressive creature
Lady Ritchie's two Prefaces to the 1902 edition of A Week
in a French Country House would, alone, demonstrate. Her
portrait, prefixed to the same edition, shows the persistence
of the Kemble profile.
The Charles Kembles' younger son, Henry, went into the
Army, and was the father of a sound actor, recently dead,
Henry Kemble, well remembered in The Man from Blankley's.
Mrs. Siddons's sisters, Frances and Elizabeth, appeared in
London before her brothers. Frances made her first appear-
OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS 151
ance, as Alicia, in Jane Shore, on January 6th, 1783, whereupon
Sophy Weston wrote to Dr. Whalley, " How I rejoice in our
divine Melpomene's amazing popularity ! It is feared she
will hurt herself by introducing a sister who is not at all
approved." On the following March 1st, we find Elizabeth
Kemble making a second l appearance — as Portia.
Mrs. Siddons could obtain her sisters engagements and
some good parts, but she could not make them actresses.
They were ill-advised to come to London. For the public,
they were too like herself — but ' as moonlight unto sunlight.'
The timbre of their voices, says Boaden, so closely resembled
Mrs. Siddons's as to vex and weary an audience, hearing
either of them in a play with her. From all other players
and their supporters the two young women had nothing to
expect but hostility. Here were Sarah, Frances, Elizabeth — •
and John and Stephen were expected ! The then very
narrow theatrical area was threatened with a Kemble in-
undation But the Miss Kembles' worst hindrance, as has
been said, was their lack of dramatic power. It was in vain
that Frances attended Thomas Sheridan's elocution lectures
in Hickford's Great Room in Brewer Street. The kindest
criticism on her was that her diffidence obscured her talents.
If formed by nature for anything histrionic, it was to play
heroine's confidante. She was, no doubt, feminine and
pleasing, and, certainly, the immortal half-length of her
Reynolds painted, and John Jones engraved, represents a
young lady with whom any man might, without reproach,
fall in love.
That acrimonious outlaw, George (or 'Shakespeare ') Steevens,
did fall a little in love with her, but John Kemble and
Mrs. Siddons made it no secret that his attentions were
unacceptable, and, in the fulness of time, another Shakespearean
scholar ' came along,' in the shape of Mr. Francis Twiss, with
more solid proposals. A 'thin Dr. Johnson without his hard
words,' Twiss was a man of as steady character as the Kembles
themselves, and that straight and honest personality, Mrs.
Inchbald, described him as one ' whose integrity nothing could
warp.' He had been credited with cherishing 'a hopeless
1 No record of the date of the first seems to have survived.
152 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
passion for Mrs. Siddons,' but, whether he had or not, on
May ist, 1786, he led to the altar her 'soft and mitigated
likeness.' I Francis take thee Frances.
Mrs. Siddons to Whalley, August nth, 1786: "Yes, my
sister is married, and I have lost one of the sweetest com-
panions in the world. . . . She has married a most respectable
man, though of but small fortune, and I thank God that she
is off the stage." Six or seven weeks later : " Mrs. Twiss will
present us with a new relation towards February."
The fortune, as judicious Mrs. Siddons had observed, was
small, and the ' new relation ' (Horace Twiss) was shortly
followed by four others. From 1807 onwards, Mrs. Twiss,
assisted by her husband and daughters, kept a fashionable
parlour-boarders' school in Bath. The terms were high — a
hundred guineas, with ' Entrance five guineas,' but, on the
other hand, holidays were few — ( in each year one vacation
only, which will last six weeks.'1 We may picture a school
somewhat on the lines of the Lambs' Mrs. Leicester's, where
little Miss Manners, aged seven, inquires of the other infants,
" Pray, ladies, are not equipages carriages ? " One of the
Prince Regent's nine adopted children, the only girl, was at
Mrs. Twiss's. " Aunt Twiss's school participated in the
favour which everything even remotely associated with Mrs.
Siddons received from the public," remarks Fanny Kemble.
Horace Twiss's juvenile journal is lying before me. A
true boy speaks in the following engaging fragment : —
"Journal Friday I7th July 1801. — H. Twiss born February
28th 1787, now aged 14 years, 4 months, 19 days. Up
too late: got first in Italian: whipp'd up my breakfast quick
for fear of my Father. Dined with G. Siddons [Mrs. Siddons's
younger son, set sixteen]. Reconciled him to Miss Mary
Godfrey. Stole Miss Squire's book, and returned it. Father
gave me sixpence. P.S. Quarrelled with Julia Willis — N.B.
The dinner was Calfs head, roast mutton, potatoes, and
currant-tart —
"Saturday, July i8th 1801. — My Father not well: gave us
a holiday. Walk'd with George Siddons to Mr. Wroughton's.
1 I quote from the seminary's prospectus, as given by Mr. Fitzgerald, The
fCembles, i. 231-32.
OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS 153
Call'd on Ma'am Stratt. G. Siddons din'd with us. Drank
tea with the Miss green Godfreys. N.B. Everybody had tart
at dinner but me. P.S. Dinner was Salmon, roast veal, roast
potatoes, and currant-tart, etc. etc."
In spite of his abstention from currant- tart, the boy grew
up to originate the Times summaries of Parliamentary debates,
and to write Lord Eldon's biography, to become an M.P. and
the vice-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and to have
his mots quoted throughout London. He composed Mrs.
Siddons's farewell address, he assisted when she gave her
readings, and he was one of the executors of her will.
It is a melancholy fact that human weakness was stronger
than the much-remarked family solidarity of the Kembles.
" Alas ! " said Mrs. Siddons, in the evening of her life, to
Rogers, " after I became celebrated, none of my sisters loved
me as they did before ! "
Like Frances, Elizabeth Kemble had been apprenticed to
a milliner, not bred to the stage. But the call of the blood
prevailed, and, in her case, a most genuine love of acting. Old
and stout and married, she still could tell Macready that ' when
on the stage, she felt like a being of another world.'
All the same, during her two or three seasons at Drury
Lane, she was usually untroubled by the call-boy, as some one
phrased it. In 1785, she married a godson of the Young
Chevalier, Charles Edward Whitelock, dentist and actor, of
Whitelock and Austin's north of England circuit, and went
with him, in 1793, to America, where they played in Wignell's
company. Mrs. Whitelock was ' for a time the leading tragic
actress of America/ says Mr. Brander Matthews. After her
return, in 1807, to England, at the age of forty-six, she was
unsuccessful at Drury Lane. She had become a lady of
ample and globular form, and, in London, tragedy (to her
astonishment) had no further use for her. She settled, with
her husband, in Newcastle, where they were highly respected,
and in 181 1 or 1812, she was acting there for the elder Macready.
Mrs. Siddons, consistently couleur de rose when speaking of
any Kemble to an outsider, writes thus, concerning Mrs.
Whitelock, to James Ballantyne, in a letter (from ' Leeds,
July 5th, 1807') preserved in the Morrison Collection: —
154 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
" She is a noble, glorious creature, very wild and eccentric,
not so old as myself by six years, not so tall, not so handsome,
but in all else my equal, if not superior. I have known
nothing of her from my childhood till now."
At a later date, Campbell, engaged in 'scraping up in-
formation' out of everybody for his Siddons 'Life/ to this
end established himself for two days in Mrs. Whitelock's
neighbourhood. He thought her a nice old lady, "very like
Mrs. Siddons, and the remains of nearly as fine a woman ;
but," he adds, "she is Mrs. Siddons without her fudge and
solemnity" [from a pious biographer and literary executor
this is strong!] — "just what Mrs. Siddons would have been if
she had swallowed a bottle of champagne."
While, in appearance, Mrs. Whitelock was a blonde
caricature of Mrs. Siddons, in manner and conversation she
was all that was opposed to Mrs. Siddons's 'stillness.' She
used to preface her exaggerated statements with " I declare
to God," or " I wish I may die," and when Mrs. Siddons sought
to stem her loquacity with " Elizabeth, your wig is on one
side," she would nonchalantly reply, " Oh, is it ? " and, giving
the light auburn coiffure a shove that ' put it quite as crooked
in the other direction,' proceed with her discourse.
Mrs. Jane Mason was another sister of Mrs. Siddons's of
whom history gives little record beyond the facts that she
lived in Edinburgh and brought up six children to the
stage.
Mrs. Siddons had yet another sister, Anne, or Julia Anne,
born in 1764. The potential turpitude of a large family,
drained from its other members, seemed infused into this poor
creature, whose only excuse — probably a valid one — for her
conduct could have been that she was deficient in moral
responsibility. Herself on the stage, and married to a country
actor named Curtis, while, at the same time, leading a loose
life in London, she constantly appealed to public charity,
announcing herself as the youngest sister of Mrs. Siddons. She
gave an objectionable lecture (' on chastity and other delicate
subjects/ says the European Magazine for November, 1783)
at Dr. Graham's Temple of Hymen, and tried, or pretended
to try, to commit suicide in Westminister Abbey. These
OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS 155
incidents taking place during Mrs. Siddons's J$rereton-cum-
Digges autumn of 1783, the unfriendly press made capital
out of them, assigning them to Mrs. Curtis's 'dire necessity/
the result of the 'marble-hearted' cruelty of 'the five player
Kembles (for the father is a player) and the mighty Mrs.
Siddons/
Her husband proving a bigamist, in 1792 Anne Kemble
married a man named Hatton, whom she accompanied to
America. In 1800, the pair settled at Swansea as hotel keepers,
and the widow subsequently taught dancing at Kidwelly.1
Mrs. Siddons allowed her £20 a-year, provided she lived a
hundred and fifty miles from London, and John Kemble, at
his death, left her £20 a-year. As Anne Hatton, or 'Ann
of Swansea/ she passed her later existence at Swansea, where,
in 1838, she died. She was a large, lame woman, and squinted.
She possessed imagination of a sort, and published many
novels, beside poetic trifles "which the bibliographers, if not
the critics, prize."
1 See Cymru Fu (Cardiff), Oct. igth, 1889.
XII
PIZARRO AND SHERIDAN, AND VARIOUS PLAYS
AND PLAYWRIGHTS
DURING the closing years of the eighteenth century,
those whom Byron denominated the Tedeschi dramatists
were in fashion. And not only Gotz and Die Rauber
from Germany, but the flood of intellectual jacobinism that, for
some time, had set in from France, together with the spreading
ripples from a new school of English poetry — between 1796 and
1800, Coleridge was * in blossom ' — these influences had combined
to form a taste for naturalism in drama. Throughout at least
one season, the London illumines had bewailed the unsym-
pathetic pieces put on at * Dreary ' Lane —
" Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage ;
And classic Buskins soil'd a British stage."
There was a real opening for the ' burgess drama ' Diderot
had invented and Sedaine expanded.
At the close of 1796, before this fountain was unsealed,
things were looking so bad that Mrs. Siddons wrote, in exas-
peration, to a friend, " Our theatre is going on, to the astonish-
ment of everybody. Very few of the actors are paid, and all
are vowing to withdraw themselves : yet still we go on."
Sheridan himself saw that two or three more plays like
Whitehead's Roman Father, Miller's Mahomet, and Reed's
Queen of Carthage would bring down his income with a run.
Possessing, as he did, in equal proportions, the dramatic and
the theatrical instincts, he put into rehearsal, in 1798, Kotzebue's
The Stranger, the selected English version of which, by
Benjamin Thompson, he shaped and strengthened, till every
word of his adaptation was, Rogers heard him say, his own.
156
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 157
In The Stranger, the distinctive Muse of Kotzebue, and of
everything understood in England, at his date, by the term,
' German Theatre,' rampages.1 The play is domestic, tearful,
philosophic. In Act IV., Baron Steinfort thus addresses Count
Waldburg —
" Oh, Charles ! awake the faded ideas of past joys. Feel
that a friend is near. Recollect the days we pass'd in Hungary,
when we wander'd arm-in-arm upon the banks of the Danube,
while nature opened our hearts, and made us enamoured of
benevolence and friendship."
This was echt deutsch, it was also redolent of the ' nature ' of
Diderot and the susceptible school. Sheridan threw in a song,
set to music by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the original
verse of which is better forgotten than its parody in The Anti-
Jacobin, where Troubadour, caressing the bottle of noyau under
his cloak, trolls
" I bear a secret comfort here," etc.
When Kemble produced The Stranger, British critics, to
a man, fell upon the play. Practically repeating Garrick's
objection to Douglas (expressed in an unpublished letter to
Lord Bute) that "the language is too often below the most
familiar dialogue," they said — what may equally be said of
Ibsen's 'theatre' — that its diction was flaccid and flat. As
guardians of public morals, they had worse fault to find with a
denouement in which a husband takes back his wife, repentant
after what one disapprover termed ' an extra-connubial attach-
ment.' This is a stage situation with which frequent repetitions
have since familiarised us, but, a century and a decade ago, it
outraged * proper feeling,' and caused the serious-minded to
anticipate an approaching date ' when not a child in England
will have its head patted by its legitimate father.'
There was, thus, something of the success of scandal about
The Stranger, which, in spite of bathos and irrelevant scenes,
prospered mightily. It was sincere and realistic. Thackeray
explains its charm in the ' Mrs. Haller ' chapter of Pendennis.
The claim of Kotzebue's plays on remembrance rests on the
fact that they marked an advancing wave in the progress of
1 See James Smith's travesty of The Stranger in Rejected Addresses.
158 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
tragic drama from the representation of action to the repre-
sentation of character.
Mrs. Siddons played Mrs. Haller twenty-six times in four
months, and The Stranger remained what was then styled a
standing play during, and long after, the Kemble period. On
March i8th, 1876, it was given by Phelps and Miss Genevieve
Ward as a 'revival' matinee at the Gaiety Theatre, and, still
more recently, Wilson Barrett presented it at the New Olympic.
As Mrs. Haller, we may picture Mrs. Siddons shining and
melancholy, as in the Lawrence portrait, with the 'toothache
bandage.' Those who most deplored that Kotzebue had not
written his play for the security of British families and the
edification of young persons, agreed that her conception of
'the reformed housekeeper' was perfect in its 'propriety and
judgment.' She herself must have enjoyed the part, for her
daughter, Sally, wrote to Miss Bird : " My Mother crys so much
at it that she is always ill when she comes home." 1
Having made this palpable hit with his first Kotzebue
discovery, Sheridan, for the ensuing season, took in hand, with
still more gusto, and putting more of his superlative stagecraft
into the alteration, another, more stirring, play — this time, a
melodrama — from the same source, Pizarro.
The success of its predecessor was favourable to it, and all
the boxes were 'bespoke' early. The scenery was prepared,
the parts were assigned, Sheridan alone was behindhand with
an indispensable element, the complete script of the play.
Michael Kelly sketches, in his Reminiscences, the agitation on
the stage, when, on May 24th, 1799, with the first performance2
actually in progress, and far advanced, part of the stuff — some
of the speeches in the fifth act — were still to seek, Mrs. Siddons,
Charles Kemble, and Barrymore being the three waiting per-
formers. " Mrs. Siddons told me, that she was in an agony of
fright."
Sheridan, on the other hand, was never more himself. From
the prompter's room upstairs, where he sat scribbling, he
descended every ten minutes into the greenroom, bringing
what was finished, while 'abusing himself and his negligence,
1 An Artist's Love Story, 44.
3 Surely, in spite of Kelly's statement, a rehearsal only ?
MRS. SIDDONS
BY LAU'KENCK
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 159
and making a thousand winning and soothing apologies.5 Long
afterwards, Payne Collier found, among Larpent, the Examiner
of plays' collection of dramatic MSS, Sheridan's copy of
Pizarro, ' with a few corrections hit off in the most flashing way
and dashing hand.' No wonder the corrections were few.
Of all the plays of which Mrs. Siddons was original principal
exponent, Pizarro proved the most popular, in spite of its being
only a rifacimento by Sheridan of an English translation
(Sheridan could not read German) of ' Rolla' s Tod! the second
of Baron von Kotzebue's two * Peru-Dramen! Read to-day,
the English acting version of Pizarro appears totally to lack
Sheridan's magic touch, it is turgid, bombastic, ranting — all that
Sheridan might have written another Critic to ridicule, and
much that Frere, Canning, Ellis, and Gifford did ridicule in
their skit, ' The Rovers.' Sheridan's life as a dramatist had
terminated in 1780, when, aged twenty-nine, he first took his
seat in the House of Commons, but still he depended for his
income of £10,000 a year upon the prosperity of the theatre,
and, on this occasion, at all events, pitched on a play that had
commercial value. Pizarro brought, at the lowest estimate,
£15,000 to Drury Lane.
'The Pizzarro,' as Mrs. Siddons wrote it, deals with the
Spanish conquerors in Peru. Pizarro is their general, and
Elvira (Mrs. Siddons) is Pizarro's mistress. Over against the
ferocity of the one and the volcanic temperament of the other
are set the heroic magnanimity of Rolla, the Peruvian patriot
(John Kemble) and the sweetness of Alonzo's wife, Cora. The
situation of England in 1799 gave a superficially 'topical'
character to Rolla's 'bursts' of patriotic appeal to his Peruvians,
and these c bursts ' were, in reality, adapted, not from Kotzebue,
but from Sheridan's political speeches. The house, from 'the
full-price master to the half-price clerk,' rose to ' Our King ! our
Country ! and our God ! ' George III applauded and approved,
and, when, a little later, the Duke of Queensberry asked why
the stocks had fallen, a stockjobber replied, ' Because at Drury-
lane they have left off acting Pizarro1.
The play ends with Elvira — the splendid-creature-under-
a-cloud — being led away to be tortured, while Rolla dies
of wounds, received while successfully bringing back Cora's
160 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
che-ild to her from the Spaniard's camp. Pizarro is arrantly
transpontine.
At first, Mrs. Siddons objected to the part — a laborious
one — of the 'camp-follower/ but Mrs. Haller had proved a
personal triumph, and ' Sid ' was urgent with his wife that
her one chance of touching her arrears from Sheridan was
to keep on with him. Sheridan felt nervous as to her adapt-
ability to the new part, which, in the event, she magnified
and elevated till, with the exception of Mrs. Haller, it became
the most ' capital ' of all the roles originally represented by
her. In its initial season, she played it thirty-one evenings
consecutively — an unparalleled run. Master Betty (with whom,
to the credit of her self-respect, Mrs. Siddons never acted)
caught his Roscian fire when, at eleven years of age, at Belfast,
entering a theatre for the first time, he watched her play
Elvira, in 1 802. He was, says Dr. Doran, ' stricken/ he went
home in a trance, he declared he would die or be an actor.
The eighteenth century stage owned, in succession, three
superexcellent actor-managers, Gibber, Garrick, and Kemble,
and three patentees as worthless as these men were valuable,
viz. Rich, Fleetwood, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. A
large theatre, with its complicated detail, could only flourish
by dint of 'the restless, unappeasable solicitude' Garrick
bestowed on it ; it was impossible for any one to combine — as
Sheridan professed to do — an active political life with the
successful care of the more exacting * House ' in Drury
Lane.
Financially considered, Sheridan was what Mrs. Siddons,
in 1796, styled him, 'uncertainty personified/ and (in 1798)
' that drowning gulph/ Times were when such principal actors
as the arch-empress of the drama and John Philip not only
went unpaid as to salary, but found every stiver of a benefit
looted. This happened to Mrs. Siddons in 1796, and, during
her brother's temporary secession, 1796-1800, she was made
so indignant that, sometimes, after the curtain had risen, the
unremitting one had to drive at a gallop to her house (where
he found her sewing !) and there exert his utmost irresistibility
before she would return with him, and go on. For the season,
1789-90, she retired from Drury Lane; again, in 1793, she
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 161
retired ; in company with Kemble, she was finally driven
away in 1802. In September, 1799, she wrote, to Mrs.
Pennington : " I have just received a letter, in the usual easy
style, from Mr. Sheridan, who, I fancy, thinks he has only to
issue his Sublime Commands," etc. In the previous January,
her daughter, Sally, wrote : " I wonder if Mr. Sheridan has any
notion that she is really at last determined to have no more
to do with him."
Something, though not much, might be urged on Sheridan's
side where Mrs. Siddons was concerned. Over contracts, she
was, as we have found (pp. 101 and in), a hard bargainer;
she jolly well saw, as our boys say, that she did not accept
sweating terms. The following, from a letter of January, 1792,
written by the first Mrs. Sheridan to her husband, is noteworthy,
" I see Mrs. Siddons is announced. Have you brought her to
reasonable terms ? " 1
Charles Surface that he was, Sheridan captivated every one
he wished to captivate, not least those who had to suffer from
his maddening qualities. Lovers of Lamb will recollect the
instance of Lamb's godfather, Fielde, the Holborn oilman,
who, as sole remuneration for many years' nightly illumination
of the orchestra and various avenues of Drury Lane Theatre,
received a pretty liberal issue of orders for the play, together
with the honour of Sheridan's supposed familiarity, and "was
content to have it so," since he regarded the latter half of his
recompense as "better than money." Not every one could
afford to take Fielde, the oilman's view. The poorer actors
thought it werry 'ard that, at Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day rehearsals, in contrast to Garrick, who, on these occasions,
had always allowed 'a comfortable cold collation' and drink-
ables, Sheridan, the great diner-out of his generation, did not
stand them a single glass of beer. James Smith related how
Delpini, the clown, was goaded by non-payment into telling
Sheridan plainly what an honest fellow thought of him,2 and
Miss Constance Hill, in her pleasant volume, The House in
St. Martin's Street, narrates, from the previously unpublished
1 Sheridan, by W. Fraser Rae, ii. 143, 1896.
2 Cf. Grimaldi's story of Sheridan, Life and Times oj Frederick Reynolds, ii.
231-33.
II
1 62 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
journal-letters of Susan Burney, a better story, which she
permits me to quote. The scene is laid at Dr. Burney's —
" ' Indeed, Mr. Sheridan he use me very ill/ cries
Pacchierotti. ' I assure you I have a great will . . . voglia
come si dice?'
" ' A great mind! said I.
" ' A great mind to call him Rascal. He provoke me too
much ! . . . I will write him a note.'
" Accordingly he took from his pocket a bit of paper, and
wrote the following lines : —
" ' Pacchierotti sends his compts. to Mr. Sheridan, and is
very displeased to be obliged to call him Rascal — but his
conduct is in everything so irregular he can give no better
title to so great Breaker of his Word. D n him and
his way of thinking, which I wish it may bring him to the
Gallows.'"
But the opera singer never sent this 'incendiary letter/
and Sheridan continued, according to Mrs. Thrale's mot, to grow
' fat like Heliogabalus on the tongues of nightingales.'
There is * no pause i' the leading' of contemporary opinion
as to Sheridan's moral irresponsibility. It is unanimous. For
a last touch of it, we may take what Campbell told Moore
as to there having been found, at Sheridan's death, " an immense
heap of letters, which he had taken charge of to frank, from
poor husbands to wives, fathers to children, etc." Some one
has yet to arise who will whitewash Sheridan's character, and
make a satisfactory job of it.
' Sheri ' (as his first wife, in her letters, wrote it) was always
readier at accepting responsibilities than at working them off.
Whenever anything in the nature of a claim was magnanimously
presented to his Keltic imagination he acted decisively in
response. The instance of his immediately paying a trades-
man when he proffered his bill as a debt of honour is
symptomatic.
After Shakespeare's plays, The School for Scandal and
The Rivals continue to be the nation's favourite dramatic
classics, growing, not diminishing, in both popular and critical
esteem. Granted that Sheridan 'played the sedulous ape'
to Buckingham, Farquhar, and Congreve, that he was not
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 163
a dramatist accustomed (in Mr. Archer's phrase) to think in
terms of character, that he exhibited a gentlewoman guilty
of malapropisms which would have been flagrant in the
milliner who supplied her with caps, that he made his clowns
(as, in The Critic, he whimsically acknowledged) scarcely less
elaborately pungent than his fine gentlemen. When all is
said, his two great comedies hold their own round the world,
as an eternal demonstration that wit is not the exclusive
property of the Latin races. The School for Scandal tingles
with wit more many-faceted than exists elsewhere throughout
the range of Weltlitteratur* in as small compass.
Resembling Burke, in being un homme de rien — simply
'standing on his head' — Sheridan, like Burke, rose to a
distinguished position in public esteem, while, socially, he rose
still higher, his character and advancement, in combination,
reminding us of Disraeli rather than of the more illustrious
Irishman, Sheridan's contemporary. The fact that he was,
at once, managing proprietor of Drury Lane and a Minister of
the Crown is, to a modern imagination, in itself piquant.
That he never rose high in office was largely due to the
fact of the long Tory ascendancy which covered most of his
political life. Except to readers of history, his name, as
occurring in public affairs, is best remembered by the tradition
of the florid — in the end, futile — speeches he delivered on the
charge concerning the Begums of Oude, in the first year of
the greatest state trial since Charles I's. His best memorial,
in his public capacity, is that in those venal days, he, who
had not inherited a shilling, could justly boast 'an un-
purchasable mind.'
Next after wit, tact was the ' note ' of his utterances. His
good taste in personal reference was never better shown than
when, in 1787, he was entrusted with the task of making such
an amende to ' Princess Fitz ' in the House as should pacify
feelings outraged by Fox's demi-official denial there, four
nights previously, of the fact of her marriage to ' Prinny.'
Yet no man's jests at the expense of others were more pointed,
or possessed a flavour more wholly their own than Sheridan's,
and we seem to see the teasing, fun-loving eyes, set in the
heavy-featured Bardolph countenance, as we read that when,
1 64 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
remarking in a Parliamentary speech that Dr. Willis, George Ill's
insanity specialist, professed to have the power to read the
heart from the face, he added, looking at Pitt, that 'this
simple statement seemed to alarm the right honourable
gentleman.'
His lightest quip was the rueful one he made when
acquaintances marvelled at his being able to sit swallowing
port in the Piazza Coffee House, while the other M.P.s — their
debate broken up from sympathy — were out watching
" the long column of revolving flames
Shake its red shadow o'er the startled Thames,"
as his uninsured property in Drury Lane sank to ashes. " A
man may surely take a glass of wine by his own fireside,"
said he. His stoicism may have contained something of
insensibility. Levity was his vice.
Sheridan's is an elusive character to estimate. Probably,
Professor Brander Matthews best summed it up, as from
within, by saying, "when he had once put himself in a
position where he was unable to do exactly what he had
agreed to do, and what he always desired to do, he ceased
to care whether or no he did all he could do." With greater
hardness, and looking at Sheridan from the standpoint, not
of faith, but works, the anonymous contemporary author of
Sketches of Distinguished Public Characters of George the
Fourth, held that "none who enjoyed so much personal
influence ever did less for the world." Posterity is fairly
agreed that Sheridan's brilliant life lacked purpose, and most
of us share the impression he made on Wilson's Shepherd,
who ' couldna thoh: to hear sic a sot as Sherry aye classed wi'
Pitt and Burke/
Turning to lesser people who wrote pieces in which Mrs.
Siddons shone, it is sadly true that the rank and file of the
dramatists ' were with want of genius curst.' No character
created by Mrs. Siddons has continued to hold its own on
the stage. Forgotten are those stilted, stodgy tragedians,
Cumberland, Jephson, Murphy, each of whom mistook a
procession of verbiage for a play ; equally forgotten are
the meagre comedians and farce-writers, of whom Frederick
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 165
Reynolds, Dibdin, and Cherry may be named as representative.
Mrs. Siddons's biographer, Boaden, was among those who
came to 'an untimely beginning' in the department of
tragedies. His effort was called Aurelio and Miranda, but, in
spite of Mrs. Siddons's acting, and in spite of the author's
asseveration that ' the three first acts were rather powerful in
interest,' it failed dismally. It was founded on Ambrosio, or the
Monk, and ' Mat ' Lewis, the author of that nerve-racking
romance, was himself eminently successful at Drury Lane
with The Castle Spectre, in which Mrs. Jordan played Angela,
the heroine. The Castle Spectre drew great and constant
houses, and, for a time, eclipsed Shakespeare. As Byron
sagely said, " It is fitting there should be good plays, now
and then, besides Shakespeare's," though, as critics judge,
Lewis's numerous pieces would scarcely be called good plays.
Still, " tous les genres sont permis, hors le genre ennuyeux" to
that The Castle Spectre did not belong. It may be doubted
whether Mrs. Radcliffe or Lewis did more to kindle the love
for all that Catherine Morland thought 'horrid' — and vastly
delightful. The German tales of mystery were the source at
which both authors drank.
It was regrettable, both for his sake and the theatre's, that,
in spite of his extreme and naif delight in Mackay's per-
formances of the Bailie and Dominie Sampson, Scott would
never undertake to dramatise any of his novels or poems,
leaving the task, and the profit, to other, inferior hands.
His early prose attempt, The House of Aspen (also drawn from
a German Quelle), was his solitary direct contribution to drama,
and this John Kemble put in rehearsal (in 1799) but did not
produce.
On November 3rd, 1784, Mrs. Siddons first played Margaret
of Anjou, in Franklin's The Earl of Warwick, not a new drama,
nor a good one, yet one in which, during a long series of years,
her acting was warmly praised. In 1785, Mrs. Tickell wrote to
her sister, Mrs. Sheridan, her observant comments on the
rendering —
" I may tell you that Mrs. Siddons was charming and very
different from what we had ever seen of her. If you
remember the part, there is not only a great deal of ranting,
1 66 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
that is in the style of Zara, but also a sort of irony and level
speaking, or rather familiar conversation that placed her quite
in a new light. I thought she was very great indeed. Yet in
your life you never saw anything so like Kemble in every look
and word as her familiar tones."
This is interesting, as showing Mrs. Siddons capable of
successfully varying the large style and heroic delivery natural
to her, as to all her kin, with colloquial realism.
Almost immediately after first playing Margaret of Anjou,
she created the part of Matilda in The Carmelite, a part
Cumberland professed to have arranged in all its features to
suit her. The modern 'star' play was already creeping into
vogue. The Rev. William Mason designed Elfrida with an
eye to Mrs Hartley's every moyen, and Lalor Sheil contrived
his Adelaide expressly for Miss O'Neill. Genest said : " If a
list were to be made of all the pieces in which an Irishman
is pressed into the service merely for the sake of Johnstone
[commonly called Irish Johnstone, an actor of value] it would
be no short one." Button designated the innovation 'the
present preposterous system/ and when, in 1825, Pierce Egan
published The Life of an Actor, he spoke of the old-fashioned
mode of play-writing as entirely exploded in favour of the
author — ' Mr. Give-up-every thing ' — writing up to some
particular actor, actress, or group.
Round about 1800, several ladies launched tragedies.
Byron thus disposed of them : " Women (saving Joanna
Baillie) cannot write tragedy: they have not seen enough
nor felt enough of life for it."
The Scotchwoman Byron credited with good tragedies
produced eight volumes of them. Three consisted of a
'Series of Plays, in which it is attempted to delineate the
stronger passions of the mind — each passion being the subject
of a tragedy and a comedy.' They were designed for the
stage, but, pace the opinion of England's then foremost man
of letters, they were inadequate to sustain stage tests. It
was expected that Mrs. Siddons and Kemble would make
some coups de theatre in De Montfort (the tragedy that
delineated the passion of hate), but the play, produced on
April 29th, 1800, oozed through eleven nights, and then
VARIOUS PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 167
(owing, said Sheridan, to the perverted taste of a public that
preferred to see elephants on the stage) stood stagnant,
till Kean again failed with it, in 1821. It was over-moralised,
mechanically organised, palpably one in a set. Yet it has
beauties, and — as a play to be read — vigour, that go some
way to explain Byron's salvo of Miss Baillie, as well as the
eulogium of Scott, who, while placing Campbell and himself
infinitely below Burns among Scots poets — ' not to be named
in the same day' — regarded Joanna as 'now the highest
genius of her country.' In point of fact, she possessed the
idyllic, not the dramatic, gift.
Miss Burney penned a tragedy, Edwy and Elgiva, and
Mrs. Siddons played in it, but it was visited with damnation
on its first night of life. The saving sense of the absurd
that sparkles in every line of Fanny's diary deserted her
when she tried to soar.
Percy, a Tragedy by Hannah More, had every advantage
from Garrick's encouragement when launched in 1777, and
Mrs. Siddons and Kemble did their best with it in 1787, but
the public found it 'sickly,' it had no root. That Mrs.
Siddons herself knew what constitutes a good play appears
from her remark in a letter to Whalley dispraising Great-
heed's, "All the people in it forget their feelings to talk
metaphor instead of passion."
XIII
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES
BY their original numbers, augmented, as we have seen,
by their marriages within their own profession, the
Kembles, only less than by their talents, character,
and prudence, bade fair, at one time, to block theatrical
avenues and monopolise emoluments."1 In the greenroom
their style was termed ' the family-acting/ and, by the openly
envious, 'the Kemble rant.' Their recitative method, though
partly determined by the blank verse tragedies then in
vogue, was also a manner they adopted from temperament,
and by preference. The spirited manner of Garrick had
been exercised in the same parts in which the Kemble
brothers were as declamatory as Quin.
At no period of her great career had Mrs. Siddons cause
for serious anxiety as to a rival. It was inevitable, when
she first became celebrated, that the sexagenarian play-
goer— an evergreen plague — should talk heavily to younger
people about Susanna Gibber and Hannah Pritchard. Not
only did old Lady Lucy Meyrick dilate on the plebeian (!)
emotion of Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth compared with
Mrs. Pritchard's, but Lord Harcourt, the husband of one of
Mrs. Siddons's closest friends, while allowing that she could
'assume parts with a spirit,' held her altogether second in
the somnambulist scene to the great Hannah, her tragic pre-
decessor.
From the Bath Theatre, as might have been expected,
came the first of the younger ladies whose names were, in
succession, for a short time, whispered as possible disturbers
1 " Drury Lane will be in the hands of the Kemble family, in less than six years."
— The Morning Post, April 3ist, 1784.
168
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 169
of Mrs. Siddons's peace. Elizabeth (sometimes called Anne)
Brunton came up to Covent Garden for the 1785-86 season,
and some spasmodic endeavours were made in the press
to persuade the public that in the new arrival it would find
a more than Siddonian star. The Green-Room Mirror said
Miss Brunton was ' the Roscia of the age ! and phoenomenon
of NatureV adding, with a touch of anti-climax, that she
promised 'to prove a principal support of the British stage'
Although London at large did not confirm the enthusiasm
of Bath, Miss Brunton was acknowledged to be a capable
actress. She played at Covent Garden till 1792, when,
having, in the previous year, married Merry, who, as ' Delia
Crusca,' had formerly, in Florence, been a prominent member
of the Arno Miscellany set, she withdrew from the London
boards, to reappear, in 1796, as a star of the first magnitude
in the United States, where she settled, lost her husband in
1798, and married Warren, the Philadelphia and Baltimore
Manager. This Miss Brunton is not to be confounded either
with her younger sister, Louisa, who played comedy at
Covent Garden from 1803 till 1807, when she became
Countess of Craven, or with her niece, another Miss Elizabeth
Brunton, whose stage career extended from 1815 to 1849.
This third Miss Brunton married the actor, Frederick Henry
Yates. She was Edmund Yates's mother.
Late in life, Mrs. Siddons spoke of Miss Sarah Smith,
afterwards Mrs. Bartley, as having been the lady next held
up, after Elizabeth Brunton, as her likely rival, but such a
suggestion must have been idle, sterling actress though Mrs.
Bartley was. Combe (who disliked Mrs. Siddons) publishing,
in 1812, his 'Tour of Doctor Syntax,' vainly tried, by
ignoring the great actress, to exalt Miss Smith above her,
in the following passage : —
" The Drama's children strut and play
In borrow'd parts, their lives away; —
And then they share the oblivious lot ;
Smith will, like Gibber, be forgot!
Gibber with fascinating art
Could wake the pulses of the heart ;
But hers is an expiring name,
And darling Smith's will be the same."
i;o THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
A sounder judge than Combe, Mrs. Siddons's worshipper,
Macready, found, when he acted with Miss Smith, that "of
the soul, that goes to the making of an artist, there was
none."
Before me, dated 'Dec. 28. 1814; lies an unpublished
letter1 from Mrs. Siddons to her niece, 'Nanny' Twiss, in
the thick of which — with one of those abrupt changes of
subject that so often indicate, on the correspondent's part, a
strong, veiled interest in the new topic — these words occur :
"You see Miss Oniel has quite extinguish me. She has
really a great deal of tallent and I hope the public will
continue their adoration of her, for I hear she is a very
amiable good young woman." The writer had retired two
years previously, yet the fact rankled that the public should
be paying adoration at another shrine. To Rogers, Mrs.
Siddons frankly admitted that the public had a sort of
pleasure in mortifying their old favourites by setting up
new idols.
Belonging to the long line of conspicuous Irish players,
Eliza O'Neill, aged twenty, made a debut in Dublin in 1811.
Three years later occurred the inevitable migration, and, on
her first night at Covent Garden, she took the audience by
storm. She was naturalesque and mobile, and Talma himself
spoke of her voice of tears. Beauty, also, she possessed, and
the gift of blushing rosily under stage emotion, though, beyond
that power, her dramatic expressiveness resided in her postures
and gestures, not in her face. Hazlitt acutely observed a
' fleshiness ' about her manner, voice, and person which incapaci-
tated her for the Volumnia of Rome and of Shakespeare.
She had sense enough to refuse the part of Lady Macbeth.
The trenchant mother of an Archbishop of Dublin thus con-
trasted her with her infinitely greater predecessor : —
" Miss O'Neill is said to be more natural than Mrs. Siddons
was, but to gain no more by it than waxwork does by being
a closer representation of nature than the Apollo Belvedere.
Very few discriminate sufficiently in the arts between the merit
of an exact representation and an ennobled one ; and people are
not fair enough in general to allow that something must be
1 Kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Frank Dillon.
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 171
sacrificed of fidelity in order to reach that elevated imitation
which alone gives strong and repeated pleasure."
Miss O'Neill had five years in which to prove her
secondariness. In 1819, Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Wrixon
Beecher, M.P. for Marlow, swept her off the boards. When
the wife of a baronet, she is said to have affected — as Lady
Derby (Miss Farren) is also said to have done — an amusing
ignorance of the details of stage life.
A shoal of young women formed themselves on Mrs.
Siddons. Genest particularly mentions Mrs. Weston, whose
performance of Lady Macbeth was a close imitation. In her
retired years, Mrs. Siddons had protegees, and instructed them
(non-professionally) in acting. One was Miss Dance, whom
the past-mistress warmly recommended, begging her friends to
be present on March 2Oth, 1821, at The Stranger, at Covent
Garden, when Miss Dance was to make her first appearance
on any stage. Miss Dance possessed good abilities and good —
somewhat Siddons-like — looks, but she neglected work for ' balls
and parties,' and was discharged in disgrace. She had failed
to learn from Mrs. Siddons the great lesson that the laurel
must be paid for.
Not only had Mrs. Siddons imitators, but a mimic — in the
shape of Mrs. Mary (Becky) Wells, or Mrs. Leah Sumbel, who
was so very much a scapegrace that both Miss Farren and
Mrs. Siddons refused to play if she were given the secondary
parts. At Covent Garden, in 1788, and before and after that
year, in the provinces, Becky Wells used to represent ' a scene
from Two Great Tragic Actresses' — Mrs. Siddons and Mrs.
Crawford — but beyond impudence, a leering smile, and a known
character for liveliness, the performance was only what they
then called ' La La,' i.e. indifferent, and in every way inferior
to the imitations of that brilliant amateur, Simons. Palmer,
nevertheless, paid Mrs. Wells £$o a night to give her imitations
in Bath.
It was the speciality of Elizabeth Farren, on the stage, to
represent the well-bred woman of fashion, smiling, adroit, quick,
— some critics said too quick — at recognising a double entendre,
while remaining as invulnerable in manner as she was in private
character. Frigid — in the latter capacity — she may have been,
THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
and long-sighted she certainly was, for she remained unwon till
nearly forty, for the sake of the twelfth Earl of Derby, a man
of such quaint appearance that he looked a caricature in real
life. The attachment between them covered eighteen previous
years, Lord Derby's first Countess not having had the good taste
to disappear till within seven weeks of his second marriage.
Early in 1796, we find Mrs. Piozzi writing to the Rev. Daniel
Lysons : " Will Miss Farren's coronet never be put on ? I
thought the paralytic countess would have made way for her
long ago." All London knew the state of affairs, and appre-
ciated the skill with which Miss Farren kept her unalterable
Earl (the phrase was Horace Walpole's) at thus-far-and-no-
farther point. Partly as a result of having directed amateur
theatricals at the Duke of Richmond's, she visited, meanwhile,
in very exclusive sets. Walpole, in a letter to Miss Berry,
records the fact of supping, in 1791, at her house — the Bow-
Window house in Green Street — to meet Sir Charles and Lady
Dorothy Hotham, Kemble, Lord Yarborough's sister-in-law,
Mrs. Anderson, and that conclusive guarantor of a hostess's
reputation, Mrs. Siddons.
Miss Farren, certainly the most eminent comedienne of
Mrs. Siddons's earlier prime, had been originally introduced to
Colman by Younger, for whom she had played in Liverpool.
She came, at about eighteen, to the Little Theatre (' the Hay-
market') in 1777, and began work as Miss Hardcastle. On
her slight shoulders descended, at Drury Lane — where she
became, from 1778 onwards, principally acclimatised — the
mantle Mrs. Abington was soon to let fall, and she wore it with
the elegance with which she wears the fur-trimmed white silk
' John ' cloak in the Lawrence full-length, till Mrs. Jordan,
taking the comedy throne Miss Farren, at marriage, vacated,
brought in another, less rarefied, type of light acting.
On the date (May 1st) of Miss Farren's wedding, Mrs.
Siddons referred to her marriage in an epilogue, by Mrs. Piozzi,
unexceptionable — to use a word of the period — in taste. Many
of the journalists, on the other hand, were fulsome. One writer
said — what was, no doubt, true enough — that "the profession
she has just quitted will acquire a respectability from her ex-
altation (such are the prejudices of the world) which no talents,
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 173
however extraordinary, could procure for it." Twelve years
after her marriage, Creevey, after dining, with his wife, at Lord
Derby's, recorded —
" . . .at Lord Derby's nobody but us. Lord Derby excellent
in every respect, as he always is, and my Lady still out of
spirits for the loss of her child, but surpassing even in her
depressed state all your hereditary nobility I have ever seen,
tho' she came from the stage to her title."
The true Thalia of our Melpomene's prime was not Miss
Farren, but she who, in Boaden's for once picture-making
words, " ran upon the stage as a //^-ground, and laughed for
sincere wildness of delight." If ever a human creature was
designed by nature to please and entertain, it was Dora
Jordan.
To Tate Wilkinson she owed the surname that suggests a
baptism. When, in 1782, as Dora Bland, she arrived, aged
twenty, in Leeds, with her mother, brother, and sister, none of
them ' well accoutred,' he admitted her into his company, after
briefly testing her merits. Previously, in Dublin and Cork, she
had undertaken anything and everything Daly wanted, and
when Wilkinson gruffly asked whether her line was tragedy,
comedy, or opera, she replied, 'All.' Wilkinson expressed
astonishment, but the protean aspirant was successfully cast,
one night, Calista, in The Fair Penitent, another, Priscilla
Tomboy in the farce of The Romp, another, William (" she
sported the best leg ever seen on the stage," the Rev. John
Genest apprises us) in Mrs. Brooke's opera, Rosina. Her
playbill name was 'Miss Francis,' but, before she had been
long in Yorkshire, family reasons * indicated ' another change of
name, and one fortified by * Mrs.' " You have crossed the water,
my dear," said Wilkinson, " so I'll call you Jordan." " And by
the memory of Sam," he would add, when gleefully boasting,
in after years, of his association with the comedy queen, " if she
didn't take my joke in earnest, and call herself Mrs. Jordan ever
since!" When, one August evening of 1785, as the Poor
Soldier, she was trying to exhilarate a York audience, Mrs.
Siddons happened to be in front. As reported by Wilkinson, her
comment on the performance was to the effect that Mrs. Jordan
was better where she was than to venture on the London
174 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
boards. The doubt she expressed was, at the moment, justified
by the limited enthusiasm manifested by the York house.
Fourteen months later, we find Mrs. Siddons writing from
London to Whalley : " We have a great comic actress now,
called Mrs. Jordan ; she has a vast deal of merit, but in my
mind is not perfection."
The day was at hand when, in London, the narrower-
minded lovers of Mrs. Jordan would inquire, concerning Mrs.
Siddons, ' Where is Nature ? ' while the duller among Mrs.
Siddons's admirers would retort, concerning Mrs. Jordan,
1 Surely she is vulgar.' And Dora Jordan's day outlasted even
the ten-year day of the Blessed Damozel, for it commenced
with her first Drury Lane season, 1785-86, and only terminated
in 1814, when, 'a-tiptoe,' professionally, 'on the highest point of
being,' she suddenly quitted the London stage, two years before
her forlorn death at St. Cloud. She had, formerly, always
talked of retiring whenever Mrs. Siddons should retire.
In spite of the ' steady, melting eye ' that sank into Lamb's
heart, Mrs. Jordan's face was not what they then termed ' critic-
ally' handsome, though her figure received the high encomium of
Sir Joshua Reynolds's statement that it was the most perfect in
symmetry he had ever seen. She had a better gift, for an actress,
than beauty — that of being whatever character she assumed.
She subjugated all the men in the audience; she seemed
created to dry the tears Mrs. Siddons bade flow ; like Fontaine,
the celebrated Dublin dancing-master of her time, she seemed
to be for ever saying, ' Egayez-vous> mes enfans> il riy a que $a?
All that was so sunshiny and full of fun in her appearance, the
elastic spring, the artless gestures, the quickness of turn —
gained value from her humourous delivery, her little breaks of
voice and arch inflections. She made such words as 'best
gown/ ' but I don't — I won't,' ' I a'n't deaf,' each a whimsical
miracle, and Macready speaks of 'certain bass tones' which
' would have disturbed the gravity of a hermit.' Gait says that
the way she pronounced the word, ' ecod ! ' sounded as if she
had taken a mouthful of some ripe, delicious peach. Coleridge,
discoursing, in 1825, at Lamb's Colebrooke Cottage, avowed that
it was the witchery of her tone that suggested the idea in his
Remorse that, if Lucifer had been permitted to retain his angel
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 175
voice, hell would have been hell no longer. The best description
of a laugh I know is Leigh Hunt's description of Mrs. Jordan's.
In spite of her Leeds debut as Calista, tragedy was outside
Mrs. Jordan's range, nor was she capable of personating a fine
lady. She, thus, never crossed the true path either of Mrs.
Siddons or of Miss Farren. Comedies supplying two first-rate
parts where she would not have eclipsed Mrs. Siddons being
few, Mrs. Siddons and she, so long contemporaneously at Drury
Lane, very rarely acted together. They did so in Pizarro, and
also (Nov. 24th, 1797) in The Rivals. Mrs. Tickell contributed
an interesting aside on Mrs. Siddons, when she wrote, in 1785,
that Mrs. Jordan ought to " make a sweet tragedian, because, in
Twelfth Night, her voice in the pathetic is musical and soft,
and she has the Siddons ' Oh ! ' in perfection." Mrs. Jordan
was far less Euphrosyne off the stage than on it, but, across the
lamps, no one ever guessed that she knew nervousness, depres-
sion, or annoyance. In her maturity, she was aware of her
limitations. " If the public had any taste," she said, in the
greenroom, to John Taylor, "how could they bear me in
the part [Rosalind] which ... is far above my habits and
pretensions ? "
For twenty years, thanks to Mrs. Jordan, the Duke of
Clarence enjoyed as much domestic happiness as the Royal
Marriage Act permitted to him. She bore her sailor prince
five sons and five daughters, and shared her income with him,
calling the provincial tours that swelled it her 'cruises.' Her
dismissal, in 1811, was due to no fault of hers, and was
attended by every circumstance of respect. Having left
England to avoid creditors, her debts being the consequence
of bills given by her to relieve her worthless son-in-law, Alsop,
Mrs. Jordan died, on July 3rd, 1816, of jaundice and
dejection.
Little needs to be said concerning other actresses who
flourished during Mrs. Siddons's prime. The career of
Harriot Mellon as an actress was infinitely less interesting
than as a woman. She, again, was Irish, and the countrified,
un-stagy look she always retained, together with a kind of
shy boldness, constituted her charm. At Liverpool, in the
summer of 1796, Queen Siddons paid her the supreme com-
1 76 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
pliment of leading her forward by the hand, and, in her flat,
forcible way, thus addressing the assembled company:
" Ladies and gentlemen, I am told by one I know very well
that this young lady for years in his father's company con-
ducted herself with the utmost propriety. I therefore intro-
duce her as my young friend." The same bounty was
afterwards extended to the same actress in the Drury Lane
greenroom. It was a standard to live up to.
Miss Mellon was Nature's own Audrey, but only when
more eminent actresses were ill did she play leading business.
On the other hand, romance must cling to the memory of
one who (in part, by her constant kindness to an ill-tempered
mother and beery stepfather) attracted to herself a fortune of
a million and a half. She married Tom Coutts, he eighty,
she thirty-eight; twelve years later, she married the ninth
Duke of St. Albans, he twenty-six, she fifty. She believed in
luck, and was born lucky. She was a rattling, coarse, free-
handed creature. She might have sat to Thackeray for the
Fotheringay.
Mrs. Siddons wrote, in 1793, concerning a once celebrated
actress, " The charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson ! I pity
her from the bottom of my soul." Was she thinking of
Perdita's arthritic helplessness and suffering, or of the Florizel
episode, and its sequel? As we have seen, she thanked God
when her sister, Frances, was safely off the slippery boards,
and she roundly (and, surely, too sweepingly) termed the
Drury Lane greenroom of her time 'a sink of iniquity.'
Much though she loved her art, she almost overestimated
the danger incurred by the maid who unmasks her beauty
to the playhouse.
Considering her rather judging disposition, only too few
sentences of Mrs. Siddons's are recorded as to the art of
other players. When such sentences occur, they go to the
root of the matter, as where, in a letter to Mrs. Pennington,
concerning the singer to whom, in Haydn's opinion, angels
should have listened, she writes : " Mrs. Billington is a most
surprising creature, but her talent plays only round the head,
without ever touching the heart." Mrs. Siddons was feelingly
persuaded of the truth that if technique is the body of art,
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 177
emotion is its soul. She is discriminating, again, in the
following appraisement of a male fellow-player : —
"The Pierre was a Mr. Snow (a banker's nephew) whose
stage name is Hargrave : he is a sort of professional amateur,
with a good figure, and may do better hereafter; but at
present he is hard and dry: the wheels of his passion want
oiling, and his voice is harsh. . . . He wants to play Othello,
but I fear it will not do : he would be more fit for lago with
a little practice."
Chief of those who passed as heirlooms from the House
of Garrick to Sheridan's Drury Lane was Garrick's right-
hand man, Tom King, and he became Mrs. Siddons's sincerest
early friend there. Within his scanty plot of ground, King
was an exquisite actor. His style was dry — brut He seemed
made to uphold sparkling dialogue, to articulate pointed
epigram and neat antithesis. In his element as Touchstone,
he was the perfect Lord Ogleby (in Colman and Garrick's
The Clandestine Marriage)^ and he shone with diamond lustre
in the tours de force of Sheridanean comedy, Puff and Sir
Peter Teazle. He made the regulation forty lines of every
prologue or epilogue he uttered, in themselves, 'a little
drama.' Off the boards, he was an agreeable person and
a gentleman, and at his house, at Hampton, says John
Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Siddons and Kemble spent some of
their Christmas holidays.
After Brereton's breakdown, the second line in tragedy
at Drury Lane was filled by Bensley, Wroughton, Palmer,
and Barrymore. In Bensley (unless ' Carlagnulus ' nodded
when he wrote of him) there must have been a streak of
greatness, Wroughton did traditional things in a safe way, the
others acted 'with much exactness/ as the stereotype of the
day had it, though, sometimes, it is to be feared, giving their
parts more mouth than passion.
To modern ideas, the London stage, between Henderson
and Kean, would, as regarded its men-folk, have appeared
better supplied on the comedy than the tragedy side. The
tragedians were hampered by a formula, or convention, which
involved a 'classic' cadence in their speech, worlds away
from the tone of natural conversation; the comedians, on
12
OF THE
UNIVERSITY
OF
gAUFORti^^
i;8 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
the other hand, drew inspiration solely from actuality. It
seems safe to believe that a modern playgoer, could he be
transported to their day, would carry away little save weariness
from an evening with those orotund tragedians, while he
would derive an immense amount of pleasure from such
actors as the gay, efficient, well-bred William Lewis, the
male counterpart of Miss Farren, from Elliston, from Jack
Bannister, from Parsons, from Suett, from Munden, from
Liston, and from Charles Mathews. Comedy, in that age,
was in what John Bernard termed a plethora of health.
Small parts were taken by good men, and hardly a varlet
would go on to deliver a message but was a fellow of spirit
and intelligence.
When Kemble entered upon the Management of Covent
Garden, he gave a conciliatory dinner at his own house to
the performers who were to be under his command. They
numbered some of the time's best actors ; among them,
George Frederic Cooke, Lewis, Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Mattocks,
Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Glover, Farley, Hull, Charles Kemble,
and Mrs. H. Siddons. The Covent Garden company accepted
Kemble unwillingly. His known pride and authoritativeness
of bearing prejudiced them against him. In the event, he
got on better, even with the unruly and insolent G. F. Cooke,
than might have been expected.
Cooke was a half-baked Edmund Kean. He had none
of Kean's refinement, and knew little beyond the slang and
bravado of tragedy. He hoped to be the rival of Kemble
— ' Black Jack/ who, he boasted, would, one day, ' tremble
in his pumps' on his account. Possibly, he might have
outrivalled Kemble, had he combined with his own salience
the other's idealism and sanity. As it was, he — of whom,
in 1 80 1, young Dermody had written to Sydney Owenson,
"Cooke is a constellation, the everything, the rage" — came
to be only describable as a drunken genius.
From September, 1803, to May, 1810, Cooke acted, on
and off, with Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, Othello, and many
other plays, but her opinion of him is not recorded. Like
Macklin, he seemed formed for sardonic parts, and malignancy
(as in I ago and Shylock) was his strength. One evening —
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 179
when he was to have played Douglas to Mrs. Siddons's Lady
Randolph — found him so flushed with the grape, as they
said then, that young Harry Siddons had to read the part
for him.
In considering Cooke's biography, the constant wonder
is how he lived as long as he did. Hissed and degraded,
he, at last, drifted to the provinces, and thence to the
United States. In 1812, he died in New York, and Kean,
when there nine years later, paid for a monument for him
on which was inscribed,
" ... In various parts his matchless talents shone ;
The one he fail'd in, was, alas ! his own."
The selfsame words might have formed Kean's own epitaph.
It is an interesting speculation as to whether Mrs. Siddons's
temperament required other good actors in order to bring
out the best of herself, or whether, with Rachel, she would
have said — or thought — concerning an imbecile cast, " Mon
entourage ria ete que pour me mieux faire ressortir" My own
impression is that, though she appreciated and praised good
work (especially in beginners, and in her own autumn), she
was rather singularly self-sufficient in her acting, and inde-
pendent of the people around. After the death of Henderson,
George III understood she 'had wished to have him play
at the same house with herself.' 1
Among those who acted with, and were commended by
her, Charles Young said the most enthusiastic and well-
judged things about her. There is small need to give the
outlines of Young's career, since that little masterpiece, A
Memoir of Charles Mayne Young, by the actor's son, is well
known to general readers. Leaving out Gibber's 'Apology'
— which possesses greater, though different qualities — <
Young's biography is the most indispensable, and the
wholesomest, theatrical memoir that exists, completely free
from banal and done-to-death anecdotes. If ever a man
helped, by his private life and character, to grace the stage,
the amiable, high-hearted Charles Young did so.
1 Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, edited by Austin Dobson, ii. 343.
i8o THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
When, on April 2ist, 1794, Mrs. Siddons first played
Lady Macbeth in Holland's new Drury Lane, under Kemble's
Management, an aiery of children represented the black
spirits and white, red spirits and grey, and among them was
a tiny creature named Edmund Kean. In 1805, when Kean,
then eighteen, was a stroller, he and his only living peer again
met, at Belfast, on the boards. Kean was Osmyn to the star's
Zara, and Norval to her Lady Randolph. As Osmyn, he
forgot his words, and Mrs. Siddons, guessing, or detecting,
drink, shook her head gravely. But she felt his latent power.
He played, she said, ' well, very well.' This was the only
occasion on which she acted with that unhappy genius,
before whom, it was said, with some exaggeration, Kemble
' faded like a tragedy ghost.'
'The small man, with an Italian face and fatal eye,'
' Mr. Kean, from Exeter,' did not get his chance before a
London audience till Mrs. Siddons had been eighteen
months retired. From the testimony of eye-witnesses who
saw both, it would appear that he made the same tremendous
attack on the nerves that she had done.
Soon the new romantic had his school as well as his follow-
ing, half a dozen lesser men were aping his instantaneous
transitions from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, and
we may remember how, in Pendennis, Mr. Manager Bingley
'darted about the stage and yelled like Kean.' By virtue
of his diametrically opposite methods, it was inevitable that
Kean should now be pitted against Kemble, as Garrick had, at
first, been pitted against Quin. Mrs. Trench gives a glimpse
of Kean's originality, in saying that her children, to whom
the wailing tragedians, with their raised voices, made Shake-
speare practically unintelligible, enjoyed every word spoken
by Kean — "his tones are so natural."
For eighteen years, the prodigy earned £10,000 a year
— and, in 1905, Messrs. Christie sold the green silk purse
Browning gave Irving, which had been found in Kean's
pocket without a sixpence inside. Byron committed to his
journal for February 2Oth, 1814, a reasonable hope that
Kean, by getting into good society, would be prevented from
falling like Cooke. But the mania for drink, contracted
PROMINENT THEATRICAL CONTEMPORARIES 181
during a boyhood of semi-starvation, proved too strong.
Added to it, there seethed in Kean something not unlike
Swift's sceva indignatio> a madness of rage against things as
they are. One of the saddest letters ever written, addressed
by Kean, under date, 1821, to 'Dear Jack' Lee, his secretary,
was sold, in 1906, at Messrs. Sothebys'. Thus it ran : —
" I have been mad for three days, imagined that all my
enemies had congregated for the purpose of destruction,
aided by demons, riflemen, and rattlesnakes — excellent
sport; the delirium subsiding, Death placed his ugly visage
in my view. I have been very drunk — very often — once so
bad that I could scarcely hobble through Macbeth. Huzza !
boy — all fun, all jollity, all good fellowship, but, heart, heart,
when wilt thou break ? "
The most recently living actor with whom Mrs. Siddons
appeared was William Charles Macready, whose hour-glass
ran till 1873. He and Young were happily associated with
John and Charles Kemble in Lady Blessington's tribute,
" Were I called on to name the professional men I have
known most distinguished for good breeding and manners,
I should name four tragedians — the two Kembles, Young,
and Macready."
Macready was a youth when, in 1812, just before her
retirement, Mrs. Siddons went to Newcastle to give two
performances in his father's theatre. The most stimulating
lesson in his artistic education was playing with her on these
occasions. The Manager's son, as junior lead, was sent to
her hotel to rehearse Beverley to her Mrs. Beverley, she
fifty-seven, her stage husband, nineteen. As he entered
the room where the great lady awaited him with her stately
daughter, Cecilia, his nervousness was so obvious that, to
lighten matters, she said, in her elephantine way, " I hope,
Mr. Macready, you have brought some hartshorn and water
with you, as I am told you are terribly frightened at me."
In the evening, on the stage, when his first scene with
her commenced, the sensitive novice again stood for a
moment petrified by her presence, but, upon her kindly
whispering the word, he was able to proceed. Before long,
he caught the glow, and began to forget self-consciousness,
1 82 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
till, in the last scene, as Mrs. Siddons stood by the side-
wing, waiting her entrance cue, he uttered a crucial sentence
in such a way that "she raised her hands, clapping loudly,
and calling out, ' Bravo, sir, bravo ! ' in sight of part of the
audience, who joined in her applause.
The next evening, the last of her two-nights' engagement,
Mrs. Siddons played Lady Randolph, and Macready was her
son. Some of her Newcastle friends had written beforehand to
her to beg that one of her pieces might be Douglas, young
Macready's 'years and ardour suiting so well the part of
Norval.' After the play ended, she sent for him, and spoke
the following valedictory : —
"You are in the right way, but remember what I say,
study, study, study, and do not marry till you are thirty. I
remember what it was to be obliged to study at nearly your
age with a young family about me. Beware of that: keep
your mind on your art, do not remit your study and you are
certain to succeed . . . study well, and God bless you."
Her advice to the player — which might be paralleled in a
letter from Garrick to Powell — fell on good soil. Macready
(c moral, grave, sublime/ as Tennyson called him) held the
highest place in tragedy for nearly a quarter of a century. He
consistently traced inspiration to Mrs. Siddons.
" Her words," he said, " lived with me, and often in
moments of despondency have come to cheer me. Her acting
was a revelation to me, which ever after had its influence on
me in the study of my art. Ease, grace, untiring energy
through all the variations of human passion, blended into the
grand and massive style, had been with her the result of
patient application. On first witnessing her wonderful imper-
sonations I may say with the poet : —
"'
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.'
" And I can only liken the effect they produced on me, in
developing new trains of thought, to the awakening power
that Michael Angelo's sketch of the Colossal head in the
Farnesina is said to have had on the mind of Raphael."
XIV
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN
WHAT of the interior at 14 Gower Street, and, later,
at 49 Great Marlborough Street? Mrs. Siddons's
existence was at the farthest remove from the
masquerade of prank and vagary a citizen imagination associ-
ates with la vie d? artiste. Nursing her babies, adding up her
weekly accounts, eating her favourite roast beef, this Madame
Sarah showed no artistic eccentricity in private life. One
likes to think of gorgeous Tragedy, sitting by the lamp-lit
table, surrounded by her early circle of pretty faces and
youthful talk — talk, one gathers from the family letters, that
would not have ' strained a Boswell to bursting/ but rilled with
affectionate amenity and light-heartedness.
It is doubtful whether 'the modern student' would feel
much interest in Mr. Siddons, were details concerning him
thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. They are not. He left fewer
traces of himself in written record than the consort of any
celebrity of as recent a period as Mrs. Siddons's. Five plain,
respectable letters by him are to be found in Whalley's
* Journals and Correspondence/ and four or five, in manuscript,
in the Hardwicke Papers, and among the British Museum
Sheridan Correspondence. It transpires that he was, not
exactly a nonentity, but undervitalised, and bounded by him-
self. In his favour, it should be said that, however unresist-
ingly he may have slid into the habit of letting his wife
support him, he was a decent liver,1 and neither ill-treated her,
1 I have seen an unpublished letter, of 1792, from Mrs. Piozzi to Mrs. Pennington,
referring to some scandal about Mr. Siddons, in which Mrs. Siddons, for a time,
believed. Taylor's Records of my Life, ii. 85, leads one to imagine that the scandal
was a slander.
183
1 84 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
nor gambled away her earnings. He retired from the stage,
but, says Boaden, only because he was too mediocre an
actor for the family's credit; he lost a considerable sum
of money, made by Mrs. Siddons, over the part proprietor-
ship of Sadler's Wells Theatre, but, there, his intentions had
been meritorious. It needed a Phelps to make 'the Wells
pay.
It is hard for a man to play perpetual second fiddle to a
wife, and the man who does so gracefully, and without fore-
going his claims to respect, must be gifted with some hidden
quality surpassing even his partner's brilliancy. It may be
granted that Mrs. Siddons's prince consort was fussy and
insignificant, and, as a consequence of his subsidiary position,
occasionally ill-humoured, but, on the whole, he seems to have
sustained the role of Melpomene's husband with reasonable
sense and taste. He was an actor — and he had to undergo
the humiliation of not acting, and of seeing his better half
play her great parts supported by her brother. Something,
in addition, may be urged for him on the score that a wife
vowed (as his was) to the exclusive worship of her own relations
is a cross for any man. Altogether unamiable he could not
have been, since he was liked, as well as esteemed, by a
brother-in-law. " The confidence between Mr. S. and my
Brother is unbounded," writes Mrs. Siddons, in a letter of
1798. It was inevitable that he should not be named in the
diaries of eminent individuals who recorded having met Mrs.
Siddons out dining. In Windham's Diary, under May 15th,
1791, we may, however, read that the writer, having called,
and found Mrs. Siddons out, "sat some time with Mr.
Siddons."
Like other subordinate husbands, * Sid ' talked lengthily of
his wife. That he had some sense of humour, and could
even ' pull ' an interlocutor's ' leg,' seems evidenced by a speech
the late Mr. James Dibdin reports him as making to Dr.
Mackenzie of Portpartick. " Do you know ? " he asked, " that
small beer is good for crying ? The day that my wife drinks
small beer, she cries amazingly; she is really pitiful. But if
I was to give her porter, or any stronger liquor, she would
not be worth a farthing."
MRS. SIDDONS'S HUSBAND
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 185
When the Lawrence troubles thickened round his daughters,
Mr. Siddons, as a counsellor and helper, left something to be
desired. He was, said his wife, so harsh and repelling that
confidence, on their part and hers, was alienated. Most
likely, he forgot he had once been young. Messrs. Allen
permit me to quote a letter, in which Mrs. Siddons, scarified,
at the time, by 'briery Circumstance/ and exasperated by
her husband's attitude, reveals his shortcomings to Mrs.
Pennington —
"You desir'd me to tell you how Mr. S. received the
information which I told you had been communicated ; with
that coldness and reserve which had kept him so long ignorant
of it, and that want of an agreeing mind (my misfortune, though
not his faulty that has always check'd my tongue and chilled
my heart, in every occurrence of importance thro* our lives.
No, it is not his fault, it is his nature. Nay, he wou'd never
have hinted to Sally anything of the matter, if I had not
earnestly represented to him how strange such reserve must
appear to her ; whereupon he testified his total disapprobation,
nay, abhorrence of any further intercourse with Mr. L[awrence],
whom he reprobated with the spirit of a just man ABOVE the
WEAKNESSES which are the misfortunes of the Race in
general."
Probably, the sympathies of ' Sid ' and Sally — so John
Kemble familiarly named the pair — were not more imperfect
than Sir Walter and Lady Scott's. A good deal has been
made of their ' separation/ of which the malignant Mrs. Galindo
gives the date — October, 1804. Mr. Siddons's ever-increasing
rheumatism had long before decided him in favour of Bath as
an abiding-place. Cecilia, his ten-year-old daughter, was at
Bath, at the Miss Lees' school, Belvedere House; his other
children were dead, or scattered. He had little in common
with his wife's fashionable set. He was inured to her absences
on tour, and she, though, hitherto, she had nursed him through
severe rheumatic attacks, was too busy to miss him. So to
Bath he went, and he and Mrs. Siddons paid each other, from
time to time, visits of considerable length.
A significant letter, of December i6th, 1804, given by
Campbell, from Mrs. Siddons to her husband, after their
1 86 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
so-called separation, concerning his ultimate disposition of their
property, runs as follows : —
" MY DEAR SID, — I am really sorry that my little flash of
merriment should have been taken so seriously, for I am sure,
however we may differ in trifles, we can never cease to love
each other. You wish me to say what I expect to have done
— I can expect nothing more than you yourself have designed
me in your will. Be (as you ought to be) the master of all
while God permits, but, in case of your death, only let me
be put out of the power of any person living. This is all
that I desire ; and I think that you cannot but be convinced
that it is reasonable and proper. — Your ever affectionate and
faithful S. S."
This undemanding letter in itself gives evidence of the
simplicity and sincerity of its writer.
Mrs. Siddons was in Bath during February, 1808. In the
Bath Herald, for Saturday, February 6th, I read: "at the
Theatre Royal Last night but two Mrs. Siddons in the Tragedy
of Venice Preserved"; in the same, for February nth: "Mary
Queen of Scots. Queen Mary by Mrs. Siddons Positively the
last night of her performing here." On the following March
nth, William Siddons died, unexpectedly — "as he had prayed
to die, without a sigh," Mrs. Siddons told Lady Harcourt. In
the Bath Journal, for Monday, March I4th, one may read:
" Friday died at his Lodgings in this City William Siddons, esq :
the very worthy and affectionate husband of the justly celebrated
Mrs. Siddons. Though long an invalid dissolution may be
said to have been sudden as he had passed the preceding
evening with a circle of friends in his usual social and pleasant
manner." The Bath Chronicle, in its next issue, practically
copied the Journal notice, and a similar item appeared in the
Bath Herald. The address of Siddons's lodgings is not given
in any of these newspapers. In the Bath Abbey Register, an
entry reads, "William Siddons was buried on March 16, 1808."
In 1908, Miss Harriot Siddons and her brother, Mr. Henry G.
I. Siddons, grandchildren of Mrs. Siddons's second son, George,
placed a tablet in Bath Abbey to William Siddons's memory.
It seems unlikely that Mrs. Siddons should have erected no
monument over her husband's grave; one can only suppose
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 187
that the original stone has been moved, and lost, during one
of the changes effected in the Abbey in the course of the
intervening century. The present tablet bears for inscription :
"Sacred to the Memory of William Siddons Esq: who died
at Bath, nth March, 1808."
His bleakness and untowardness now forgotten, William
Siddons's widow wrote of his death, two or three weeks after
it occurred, to Mrs. Piozzi : —
"... I shall feel it longer than I shall speak of it. May
I die the death of my honest, worthy husband, and may
those to whom I am dear remember me ... as I remember
him, forgiving all my errors, and recollecting only my quietness
of spirit and singleness of heart."
Since Mrs. Siddons was bread-winner and mother both, she,
necessarily, had to leave her girls, when children, and, later,
when invalids, under other feminine care than her own, while
she was away, earning for their wants. In the direction of
practical thought for them, and care for their future, this
great artist was every inch a mother. When, in 1786, Whalley
named to her his apprehensions of some undesirable marriage
threatening his pretty niece, she responded — "You could not
speak to one who understands those anxieties you mention
better than I do." Later, when her girls were 'out,' she
encouraged eligible young men, but, at this date, Sally was
only eleven, and Maria seven. Mrs. Siddons's sixth and
youngest child was born, it should be noted, twenty years
later than her eldest.
Mrs. Siddons belonged to the type of mothers who frankly
admire their children, and love to discourse of them. On four
separate occasions, she wrote to Whalley —
in 1785, "Sarah is an elegant creature, and Maria is as
beautiful as a seraphim. Harry grows very awkward, sensible
and well-disposed,"
in 1786 (January), when George was newly born, she
described him as " healthy and lovely as an angel," and — this
was her joke — " very like the Prince of Wales ! "
in 1786 (August), " My . . . children are . . . well, clever,
and lovely,"
(October) "... Sally is vastly clever; Maria and George
1 88 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
are beautiful ; and Harry a boy with very good parts, but
not disposed to learning." l
In 1794, Amelia Alderson, afterwards Opie's wife, wrote to
Norwich, from London, that she had been to Marlborough
Street, and found Mrs. Siddons nursing her baby (Cecilia —
the sixth baby) and "as handsome and charming as ever."
The unmarried lady added, " The baby is all a baby can be,
but Mrs. S. laughs, and says it is a wit and a beauty already
in her eyes."
Shortly after her 1782 re-entry into London, Mrs. Siddons
sent Harry to Dr. Barrow's Academy in Soho Square. After
a few months there, he passed, on Queen Charlotte's nomi-
nation, into the Charterhouse, where he remained five years.
1 ' Boys," observed Mrs. Siddons, speaking particularly of her
second, George, afterwards the Indian Civil Servant, "are
noisy creatures compared to girls." She frequently changed
her daughters' schools, though keeping mostly to Bath as their
locality — this was long before Mrs. Twiss opened at 24 Camden
Place. In the early part of 1789, Sally and Maria were de-
posited by their parents at Mrs. Semple's finishing-school at
Calais, where they appeared to have stayed about three years.
Thanks to their mother's genius, there was no need to
train them for wage-earning. One might have said that the
unoccupied existences they were allowed to lead as young,
grown-up girls could not have conduced to health of body
or mind, but that a sentence which occurs, in 1797, in one
of Mr. Siddons's letters to Whalley, " Sally ... has had the
worst fit I ever knew, and is still very ill," suggests a reason
for Mrs. Siddons's tacitly judging their already asthmatic
elder daughter incapable of a professional life. A statement,
singular in both senses, occurs in Mrs. Papendiek's Remini-
scences, miscalled ' Journals,' to the effect that Maria was
expected to appear, at Drury Lane, apparently, early in 1790(1)
as Lessing's Emilia Galotti. Mrs. Papendiek (whom Mrs.
Raine Ellis well summarised as 'gossipping and credulous
of gossip ') goes on to allege that Maria has, previously,
greatly shone, as Lessing's heroine, in Stanmore Priory
theatricals, that a brilliant success was anticipated, but that
1 Appendix A.
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 189
Mrs. Siddons, ostensibly on account of Maria's youthfulness
and delicacy, and really from fear of being outrivalled, with-
drew her daughter's name just before her debut. In support
of these assertions, there was, certainly, in Drury Lane
announcements, of October, 1794, mention of ' a Young Lady '
to play Emilia Galotti as 'her first appearance on any Stage/
but, on the other hand, this description was justified, on the
night of the production, in the person of Miss Miller. Pro-
bably, Mrs. Papendiek's canard grew out of nothing more
tangible than somebody's surmise (dimly recollected across a
forty years' interval) that the 'Young Lady' might prove a
Miss Siddons. The remainder of the space the 'Journals'
devotes to the Siddons family is an amusing tissue of error.
Beauty both Mrs. Siddons's daughters possessed. Maria
was the lovelier, but Sally's face had more of the interest
of character. An enchanting trio, indeed, they and Mrs.
Siddons— -fili<z pulchrcz^ mater pulchrior — must have appeared
when they entered a room together, and it cannot be wondered
at that the man of the most marked artistic sensibility of
any living in England at that time found his imagination
enchained by this conjoint vision of grace and charm that
represented the Siddons-Kemble ' type.' Thomas Lawrence,
A.R.A., afterwards Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., commenced
his strange, febrile relations with the Siddons family by
becoming, in the first instance, the follower of Sally. Mr.
Knapp's Pennington and Bird letters invalidate the order
of the data of the Lawrence drama given in Record of a
Girlhood. So few persons knew, at the time, what was taking
place as to Lawrence's successive volte-face that it is small
wonder that Fanny Kemble, who had no documents, and was
born long after both Miss Siddons were dead, saw through a
glass darkly.
Aged twenty-six, Lawrence, at about 1795, was handsome,
polished, and fascinating. From the moment he settled in
London, he struck at the highest quarry, and, says Mrs.
Inchbald, in her plain way, "his plan demanded ample pre-
mises, which in good situations are expensive to the rising
artist." He took up his quarters in Greek Street, Soho, near
the Siddonses in Great Marlborough Street.
190 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
To people of to-day it is obvious how low, compared with
Reynolds's level, was the level on which his over-elegant,
over-facile successor painted. Lawrence's best work lies in his
delicate, expressive outline drawings, as to which Elizabeth,
Duchess of Devonshire, wrote to him, " I know that your
drawings are finer than anything known," and it is difficult
to think that the same hand drew the captivating heads of
Mrs. Siddons, reproduced in Mr. Knapp's book, and, only a
little later, painted the full-length of her that hangs on the
staircase of the National Portrait Gallery with its too ruddy
complexion, its badly hung, over-stalwart arms. What
Lawrence lacked was the austerity of taste, and of mind,
generally, which, by enabling a painter to govern his art,
makes him great.
During his passages with the Siddons family, we see him,
in some of his letters, so melodramatic, so bullying, as to
recall someone's bitter opinion of Canning, viz. that he
could ' never be a gentleman for more than three hours at
a time.' Nevertheless, this was far from the impression Law-
rence made, when out of love. People, in general, found his
manners gentle, and, in spite of his obscure origin and personal
pretensions, retiring rather than assertive. Benjamin Haydon's
'obituary' comment on him that he had smiled so often and
so long that at last his smile had the appearance of being
set in enamel is well known. Less frequently quoted is
Haydon's earlier description (in a magazine article entitled
' Somniator's other Vision ') of Lawrence being turned — by
Michael Angelo's ghost! — into a bottle of sweet oil, whereas
Northcote is transformed into a gilded viper, and Fuseli sent
straight to hell. The general verdict pronounced Lawrence
too suave.
He was that combination of susceptibility and attractive-
ness which makes a man, almost involuntarily, a flirt. He
whole-heartedly desired to marry Sally Siddons, and, for her,
wore mourning till his death. Yet he confessed to the Charles
Kembles that he had, subsequently, been deeply in love with
the beautiful Mrs. Wolff, while, when he died of ossification
of the heart, still another lady put on widow's weeds for him.
He was even implicated in ' the delicate investigation ' con-
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 191
cerning the conduct of the Princess of Wales. " He could
not write a common answer to a dinner invitation without
its assuming the tone of a billet-doux ", the very commonest
conversation was held in that soft low whisper and with
that tone of deference and interest which are so unusual and
so calculated to please."
It would be clear that the Miss Siddons must have been
in every way adequate from the fact that such a man gave
them burning adoration. One all but arrives, indeed, at the
conclusion that he was in love with the whole family, and
the whole family with him. The works which established his
reputation were portraits of the Kembles, and the last sketch
he ever perfected was that of Fanny Kemble. Who can doubt
that the image of Mrs. Siddons warmed his imagination from
the day when, ' JE* 13,' he drew her portrait at Bath?
He was fourteen years her junior, but every actress is one
to two decades younger than her years. It need no more
astonish us if sundry living people maintain that he was,
deep down, in love with her, while supposing himself
enamoured, successively, of her daughters, than that, in her
day, evil thinkers invented slander to which the following
reference is made, in a letter written, in 1810, by the Princess
of Wales: "The report about Mrs. Siddons and Lawrence
I always thought most shameful, and never believed it, and
rejoice that it is proved to be false." 1
When Lawrence was sixty, Fanny Kemble, then twenty,
declared herself on the way to being in love with him, and,
since she was a Kemble, exercised over him, in her minor
measure, the old spell. " Oh ! she is very like her [i.e. Maria] :
she is very like them all," he murmured, as he gazed at the
portrait he had just made of her. It is significant that, when
he sent her a proof-plate of Reynolds's ' Tragic Muse,' with
the inscription, "This portrait, by England's greatest painter,
of the noblest subject of his pencil, is presented to her niece
and worthy successor, by her most faithful humble friend and
servant, Lawrence," he afterwards sent for the picture, and
erased the words, " and worthy successor." His secretary told
1 Diary [by Lady Charlotte Bury] Illustrative of the Times of George tke Fourth,
iv. 63, see also ii. 71, 1838.
1 92 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Fanny that Lawrence had the print lying, with the inscription,
in his drawing-room for several days before sending it to her,
and had said to him, " Cover it up ; I cannot bear to look at
it." The most touching fact of all is that when, after years
of severance (for, in spite of a few wistful letters written to
him as necessary occasions arose, she did not resume the old
friendly relations after Sally's death1) Mrs. Siddons felt not
far from her end, she said to her brother, " Charles, when I die,
I wish to be carried to my grave by you and Lawrence."
" Good God ! did she say that ? " exclaimed Lawrence, when
told. Her wish could not be fulfilled, for Sir Thomas pre-
deceased by eighteen months her he had called ' the
Immortal.'
I should have shrunk from even approaching the ground
Mr. Oswald G. Knapp made his own by his admirable mani-
pulation, in An Artist's Love Story , of two unpublished
collections of Siddons correspondence — 1797-1803 — one his,
the other — through him — Miss Grazebrook's gift to the public,
but that, realising how incomplete the present chapter would
be without much reference to them, I wrote to him, and, in reply,
received the kindest permission, which Messrs. George Allen
& Sons, the publishers of the book, were so good as to ratify,
to avail myself of these letters. An Artist's Love Story tells,
straight from the facts, one of those ' incredible ' double dramas
of family history that only occasionally, as here, reach their
logical conclusion in tragedy, desperately piteous, full of the
cruelty and waste of nature. It is absorbing, from the emotional
intensity that breathes through every letter of these dmes
delite, and no one can read it without catching some sense
of that dependent affection, almost idolatry, which Mrs.
Siddons inspired in her daughters and intimate friends.
During 1795, Lawrence — who, for some little time, had
been attached, though not, so far, openly plighted, to Sally
Siddons, then about twenty — began, by moods of alternating
gloom and violence, to evince that something was wrong. At
last, he confessed to Mrs. Siddons that he found he loved
Maria, the bud of sixteen, better than Sally. This was a
1 He was so dilatory a painter that the fact of his exhibiting the Fitzhugh full-
length portrait of her in the 1804 Academy proves nothing.
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 193
painful situation for Sally, who had reciprocated his devotion,
but, being a temperate, high-minded girl, the worthy daughter
of her mother, she accepted the inevitable with fortitude and
smiles, and, continuing to keep the fact of Lawrence's original
courtship of her as much a secret from all but Mrs. Siddons
and Maria as, up to the present, it was, she stood aside, while
Lawrence pressed upon all concerned his zeal to become the
affianced of her younger sister. It was in the nature of things
that he should have his way, and, by the commencement of
1798, the engagement was sanctioned, though there were serious
objections, chief among them Maria's fragility of constitution.
Already, a doctor had breathed the word, consumption, as
being a menace, but the family, like other families similarly
threatened, had every hope that her ' youth, and the unremitting
attention paid her' would conquer. Up to this time, Maria
seems to have been less frequently troubled with illness than
her elder sister, for Sally was subject to spasmodic asthma,
and rarely free, for more than three weeks at a time, from a
prostrating attack of it.
The family, as a family, was more or less pulmonary. John
Kemble was badly troubled with asthma, and Sally and Maria's
brother, Henry, eventually died of phthisis.
Maria had short joy of her contract. Before six weeks
were out, Lawrence made it known to her, her mother, and
Sally that, in spite of his former recantation, he loved Sally,
and Sally alone. Perhaps, it was never the individual that
swayed him, but the type. At any rate, this was his final
return. Whether Maria had proved more trivial, and, there-
fore, less lovable, than Sally, or whether her rapidly developing
malady (which had begun to necessitate, according to the
coddling doctrine of the day, confinement to the house during
the winter) rendered her exacting and unamusing, one cannot
know.
Decorum made it impossible for Sally to give her definite,
overt consent to marry the man who had now played fast and
loose with them both. That she avowedly loved him two
letters she wrote him, presently to be quoted, show.
With an instinctive reaching towards self-justification, she
laid the unction to her soul that Maria's "heart could never
'3
194 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
have been deeply engag'd." That the wish was here parent
to the thought is evidenced by the following, in a letter from
Maria herself to Miss Bird, dated March I4th: —
" I have been quite ill again. ... I yet think I shall not
live a long while . . . and I see nothing very shocking in
the idea. ... I may be sav'd from much misery . . . and in
my short life I have known enough to be sick to death of it.
You know I suppose the cause of too much of this misery
. . . but I have determin'd to be silent."
On April 8th, commenting on the success of The Stranger^
the poor child writes: "... is it not strange one should like
to cry ? as if there was not enough of it in reality."
At the breaking of the Maria engagement, Lawrence's
visits to Great Marlborough Street ceased. In the Nineteenth
Century of April, 1905, Lady Priestley laid open two letters
Sally addressed to him during the tense period that immediately
followed, and from these the editor of the Nineteenth Century
allows me to quote. In the first, Sally wrote : —
"You cannot be in earnest when you talk of being soon
again in Marlborough Street. . . . Neither you, nor Maria,
nor I could bear it. Do you think that, tho' she does not
love you, she would feel no unpleasant sensations to see those
attentions paid to another which once were hers ? Could you
bear to pay them, could I endure receiving them ? . . . Nobody
need know what passes ; from me they certainly will not. I
will try to make myself easy, since my conduct is no secret
to her [Mrs. Siddons] whose approbation is as dear to me as
my life ; but I shall have much to endure ..."
The remark as to Sally's mother's attitude towards the
complication is interesting. Mrs. Siddons has been called
vacillating, and even cowardly, in her relations with Lawrence,
and, no doubt, the glamour he projected, from first to last, over
her imagination had much to do with her indulgence, her sub-
missiveness towards him. Habituated as she was to the ravings
of Romeos and Jaffiers, the ravings of Lawrence did not disgust
her as they would have disgusted a more ordinary matron.
The artist in her unfailingly went out to this other, younger,
different kind of artist, a man who to herself was almost a
lover. And it is difficult to see how so sympathetic a mother
MARIA SIDDONS
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 195
could, at this juncture, have denied Sally all chance of the
happiness on which her heart was set, because Lawrence had,
for a time,1 'mistaken his feelings1 at Maria's expense.
Mrs. Siddons erred in concealing from her husband Lawrence's
new apostasy. She went so far as to request Mrs. Pennington,
when enclosing Lawrence's letters, to address to her maid, Sally
Briggs, 'lest they should fall into improper hands' [i.e. Mr.
Siddons's].2 Her pusillanimity left her too much in the power
of a man whose temperament was ' artistic ' rather than manly.
Each partaker, indeed, in this chamber drama, with the possible
exception of Sally Siddons, seems to have shared the tendency
of the theatrical temperament to make much of small, and little
of great issues.
In the second letter, posted on April 24th, Sally, her affection
intensified by having met Lawrence the previous evening,
wrote : —
"... I will tell you more on Thursday. Yes, I will tell you ;
for if it is fine I mean to walk before breakfast ... I shall be
in Poland Street before nine. You have a key of Soho Square :
shall we walk there ? Oh time, time, fly quickly till Thursday
morning ! . . .
"... Have you taken your ring to Cowen's ? . . . Have they
told you it is a TRUE LOVER'S KNOT ? I bought it for you, I
have worn it, kissed it, and waited anxiously for an opportunity
to give it you. Last night, beyond my hopes, it presented
itself. You have it. Keep it, love it, nor ever part with it till
you return me my letters"
It had been arranged that Lawrence was to return Sally's
letters should he ever love elsewhere.
Like her cousin, Fanny Arkwright, Sally was a musical
composer. One of her songs, ' When Summer's burning heats
arise,' is described as sweet and melancholy, and when, in
1801, Campbell made — through Charles Moore — the Siddons'
acquaintance, he wrote : " Miss Siddons . . . sings with incompar-
able sweetness melodies of her own composition. Except our
1 " Maria reign'd sole arbitress of his fate for two years, or more." — Mrs. Siddons
to Mrs. Pennington, August 1798.
2 So completely was the secret kept from relations that, when Maria died, John
Kemble, believing Lawrence to be her affianced husband, devoted his leisure to
comforting him.
196 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
own Scotch airs, and some of Haydn's, I have heard none more
affecting or simple." Some sentences from the next paragraph
of this same letter from Sally to Lawrence throw light on the
inception of her talent : —
". . . I never should have sung as I do had I never seen
you ; I never should have composed at all. Have I not told
you that the first song I set to music was that complaint of
Thomson's to the Nightingale? . . . You then liv'd in my heart,
in my head, in every idea. . . . You did not love me then. But
NOW ! oh, mortification, grief, agony are all forgot ! ! I"
While these ecstasies were going on without, and while the
secret lovers were pacing the Square garden in the spring
morning — inside 49 Great Marlborough Street the jilted girl
was beginning to die, as Allan Cunningham maintained both
sisters did, 'just in the usual way of disease and doctors.' The
Faculty blistered and bled her, and kept her peering out of
closed windows, and feeding on her love disappointment, during
the slow weeks of winter and early spring. " I long so much to
go out," she wrote, " that I envy every poor little beggar running
about in the open air ... it seems to me that on these beautiful
sun-shine days all nature is reviv'd, but not me ... it appears
to me that I should be very like myself if I could but take a
walk, and feel the wind blow on me again."
Our present-day fervour of belief in out-of-door treatment
for tuberculosis, and contempt of our great-grandparents' stuffy-
theories thereupon — which accorded with their canopied and
close-curtained four-posters, their nightcaps, and their dread of
bathing — make us liable to fancy that fresh air only came in
with bacteriology. The following, concerning Maria Siddons,
from Mrs. Piozzi, on March 27th, 1798, to Mrs. Pennington,
merits attention : —
"... Shutting a young half-consumptive girl up in one
unchanged air for three or four months would make any of
them ill, and ill-humoured too, I should think. But 'tis the new
way to make them breathe their own infected breath over and
over again now, in defiance of old books, old experience, and
good old common sense."
When July came, the Siddons family migrated, in Maria's
interest, to Clifton. The invalid bore the journey well, seemed
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 197
better for the change, rode, even went to a ball. Less than a
fortnight later, Mrs. Siddons departed on a professional tour in
the Midlands, taking her husband and Sally with her, and
leaving Maria in Dowry Square, Clifton, under the charge of
the unselfish Mrs. Pennington, nfe Weston, who lived there.
From Cheltenham, early in August, Mrs. Siddons wrote to
Mrs. Pennington : —
" I must go dress for Mrs. Beverley — my soul is well tun'd
for scenes of woe, and it is sometimes a great relief from
the struggles I am continually making to wear a face of
cheerfulness at home, that I can at least upon the stage give
a full vent to the heart which, in spite of my best endeavours,
swells with its weight almost to bursting ; and then I pour it
all out upon my innocent auditors."
The pyschology of the player we conventionally pity,
because he
'hides in rant the heart-ache of the night,'
is here laid bare, and one of the first of players is found describ-
ing the outward manifestation permitted to stage tragedy as
' a great relief to an overfraught heart. To her, artist, primarily,
as she was, in the thickest of her cares, the exercise of her art
was a refuge and a safety-valve. Consciously, as well as un-
consciously, she mingled her own pain with the sorrows of the
part, and, thus, we cannot doubt that the loss of her two
beloved girls added a further profundity to her embodiment of
Constance, the bereft mother, in King John. She said, years
afterwards, that she had never acted so well as once, ' when her
heart was heavy concerning the loss of a child.'
Up to the date when Sally left London, Lawrence had
behaved rationally. At Birmingham, when Mrs. Siddons was
due, on her tour, to act there, he reappeared, and, on the day
1 her sweet Sally ' was despatched to Clifton to help in nursing
Maria, as to whom a disquieting bulletin had been received, he
had an interview with the troubled mother. She had just heard
from Mrs. Pennington that Maria was developing a fixed idea
of opposition to the possibility of Sally ever marrying him.
Was Maria's attitude vindictiveness against him, we may wonder,
was there subconscious jealousy in it, or was it what it professed
itself — dread (which illness rendered morbid) that her sister,
1 98 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
dependent on such a man, must be unhappy?1 Whatever
Maria's motive, it seems clear that the fact was communicated
by Mrs. Siddons, at this Birmingham interview, to Lawrence,
whom she certainly told that Sally, in view of the desperate
condition of Maria's health, now desired — with her own full
concurrence — definitely to give him up, as a lover.
In response, Lawrence behaved like (the phrase is Mrs.
Siddons's) a ' wretched madman.' To threaten suicide, or, as
its alternative, immediate departure for Switzerland, was, with
him, no new device. Actually he 'flew' to Clifton, where he
lodged, under the name of Jennings, at the Bear Inn, and pro-
ceeded to bombard Mrs. Pennington with frantic letters,
imploring her either to remould Maria's mind, or avert her
untoward influence over Sally. Possessed by the new, alarming
suggestion just opened to his view, he forgot everything but
selfishness.
Kind-hearted Mrs. Pennington, deprecating his Wertherism,
but enjoying the romance, granted him, on a scorching day, an
out-of-door interview, whereat, after trudging backwards and
forwards, ' for very Life,' in a sunny field, beside ' this torment
of a man/ listening to his bluster, she was at last driven to
' flump down upon a dusty Bank ' to hear him out. Concerning
Mrs. Pennington, at this juncture, Mr. T. P. O'Connor has
picturesquely written : —
" Here is a pretty situation for our poor fluttering chaperon ;
that narrow-winged, timorous, decorous hen that has to throw
her wings around this tragic flock — which is not her own —
with the real guardian, tall, stern, hook-nosed, brilliant-eyed,
authoritative, in far-off Birmingham, enacting feigned tragedy ! "
A sterner intruder than Lawrence was about to lift the latch.
From this time forward, the Clifton letters become full of pulse,
perspirations, cough, sleeplessness, debility, long hours of
silence, emaciation, ' not one trace of even prettiness remaining.'
Mrs. Siddons writes, in reply : " I do not flatter myself she will
be long continued to me. The Will of God be done ; but I hope,
I hope she will not suffer much \ " Regarding Sally, too, these
letters report interludes of acute asthma, when nothing avails
1 Unfortunately, Sally, even after Maria's death, considered that her sister had
been 'actuated as much by resentment for Aim, as care and tenderness for her.'
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 199
but laudanum, under which she lies, for the greater part of a
week at a time, ' her faculties ic'd over.' But Sally recovers as
rapidly as she is taken ill. On September 15th, she writes to
Miss Bird : —
" I look forward to the greatest of comforts, we expect my
belov'd mother in a week, and greatly as the joy of this meeting
will be damp'd by poor Maria's situation, yet to me it will be
the greatest comfort and happiness, if at present I could feel
happy. Blest in the society and love of that best of mothers,
I scarcely feel another want, but absent from her, there is a
vacancy in my heart nothing else can fill. You are become
better acquainted with her, my dear friend, and have overcome
the prejudices which made you afraid of her. Now then you
can imagine what she must be to me, not only the tenderest o
parents, but the sweetest and most indulgent of friends, to
whom my whole heart is open, and from whose sympathy and
consolation I have found comfort and happiness, in moments of
severe affliction. Depriv'd of every other blessing, I must still
be thankful for that great blessing."
At last, on September 24th, Mrs. Siddons, who, likewise, had
bei ;n counting on (and dreading) this day, was able to rejoin
he: children, and Maria was moved, in a sedan, from Mrs.
Pennington's, into lodgings, across the square. Actors and
their belongings were no less then than they are now the play-
things of gossip, and, already, newspaper writers ('unfeeling
Blockheads' according to Lawrence) were circling round the
death-bed of Mrs. Siddons's daughter, ignorant though they
were of its innermost poignancy.
One of the moving features in the story is the development
and intensification of Maria's character in the school of suffering.
She began, frivolous and vain, 'incapable of any exertion of
mind or body,' she herself said, and her mother agreed, a
spoilt younger girl, ready to take on her sister's lover without
self-questioning. Only a short time after, but when she is pro-
nounced in danger of ' a consumption,' condemned to the house,
and forsaken by her lover, a new interest in the doings and
feelings of others appears in her letters, as well as uncomplain-
ing patience touching her double disorder. Only towards the end
are wrung from her the words, " Think what my sufferings must be,
200 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
when I can wish to leave such a family as mine ! yet I do wish to
be released." And then, as her whole state becomes more and
more abnormal, there emerges the dogged bias against Lawrence
which remains with her till the last.
What, meanwhile, of Sally's attitude? How did she bear
herself, set midway between the impulsive artist she loved and
the dying sister he had injured, as, earlier, he had injured
herself? A few words from one of Mrs. Pennington's letters to
Lawrence best answers : —
" This dear Girl's Mind is as firm as her Heart is tender and
affectionate. The present critical and uncommon state of
circumstances in which she is placed calls forth all her energies.
She is really elevated above all thoughts of Self — alive only to
her duties."
October 7th, 1798, proved to be Maria's last day of existence.
The letter in which, at Lawrence's express request, Mrs.
Pennington conveyed to him, together with his own doom, every
detail of the final twenty-four hours, is too piteous to dwell on.
One extract is necessary to explain after-occurrences : —
" She desired to have Prayers read, and followed her angelic
mother, who read them, and who appear'd like a blessed spirit
ministering about her. She then turn'd the conversation to you,
and said : ' That man told you, Mother, he had destroy'd my
Letters. / have no opinion of his honor, and I entreat you to
demand them.' . . . She then said, Sally had promised her
NEVER to think of an union with Mr. Lawrence, and appeal'd
to her Sister to confirm it,1 who, quite overcome, reply'd : ' I
did not promise, dear, dying Angel ; but I WILL, and DO, if
you require it.' ' Thank you, Sally ; my dear Mother — Mrs.
Pennington . . . lay your hands on hers* (we did so). — 'You
understand? bear witness.' We bowed, and were speechless;
' Sally, sacred, sacred be this promise' — stretching out her hand,
and pointing her forefinger — 'REMEMBER ME, and God bless
you.'
"And what, after this, my friend, can you say to SALLY
SlDDONS? She has entreated me to give you this detail —
to say that the impression IS sacred, IS indelible — that it
1 Mr. Siddons, also, we must suppose, at Clifton, was out of the room when this
scene took place.
CECILIA SIDDONS
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 201
cancels all former bonds and engagements — that she entreats
you to submit, and not to prophane this awful season by a
murmur."
To this letter, Lawrence, only consistent in being selfish,
hurled a reply like a bardic curse. Mrs. Pennington and Mrs.
Siddons termed it 'diabolical.' It was the cry of rage of a
baffled animal, and, with Sally and her mother, injured his cause
as much as the vow it protested against had done. " It may be
love" wrote Sally to Mrs. Pennington, " but ... / fly with
HORROR from such a passion ! I will not say that weakness
shall never return . . . We cannot, you know, quite conquer all
our feelings, but . . . with the help of heaven . . . whatever I
may feel I will act AS I HAVE PROMIS'D."
Mrs. Siddons quickly returned from the dark, awful impres-
sion of untimely death to what she named 'the siege of her
affairs/ " Ce riest que le travail qui guerit de vivre? She was
no marble lady, bending over an urn. She grieved, and her
grief was, as she had once honoured a friend's for being, * little
clamorous, solemn, simple/ x yet, in under three weeks, she was
acting again. Outsiders find it a jarring fact that players
resume their engagements so quickly, after occasions of
mourning. It is sometimes forgotten that players think, not
of the amusement side of the theatre, but of what Mrs. Siddons,
just after her father's death, termed ' the anxiety of business/
She now chose the part of Isabella, in Measure for Measure,
for the touching reason that it was ' a character that affords as
little as possible to open wounds which are but too apt to bleed
afresh/ Even now, she could not face the consequences of
shaking off Lawrence altogether. Perhaps, because she feared
what she called ' an eclat ' unless he were humoured, she made
the certainly weak suggestion to Mrs. Pennington that the latter
should promise him that Sally would become engaged to no
one else.
From this time, Lawrence, as a speaking character, drops
out of the Siddons domestic drama, and Sally, except by some
comfortless accident, saw him no more. For awhile, he went
on declaring — to the Twisses — his unalterable determination to
marry her. When she did, by chance, see him, he behaved
1 Whalley, ii. 22.
202 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
ungovernably. Once he wrote to her, but she answered his
letter so decisively that he began to realise she was immovable.
In the detached tone that, every now and then, characterised
Mrs. Siddons, even in affairs of acute personal interest, she wrote,
concerning her daughter, under date, November nth, 1799:
" Poor Soul, she thought, I suppose (naturally enough for her)
that his adoration was to last for ever, even against Hope, and
I think is rather piqued to find that ' these violent transports
have violent ends.' "
Sally wore a brave face, in spite of the inner restlessness her
intimate letters reveal. Though, shortly after her sister's death,
she cared not if she never entered another ' crouded ' assembly,
she now mixed a great deal in society. She took up the
successive fashions of the hour — among them, skipping. She
kept up her friendly familiarity with Mrs. Inchbald's Charles
Moore, that phenomenal laugher, the youngest and barrister
brother of Sir John Moore, on whose distinguished family
a volume might be written, tragic, too. Mrs. Mair — though,
it may be, under a misapprehension — states that, at the time
of her death, she was engaged to Charles. In a letter of
Mrs. Siddons's we read that Sally ' had a particular regard for
him,' a regard, she implies, which, had health been hers, might
have ripened into marriage. There can be little doubt that
Charles Moore was in love with her.
Asthma, meantime, was strengthening its grip on Sally.
On January 8th, 1799, she writes, " I am ... in tortures with that
same pain in my back which returns with the slightest cold."
Seven months later, she had an attack so severe as to place her
life in some danger ; in the following November, Mrs. Siddons
was doubting whether she ought ever to go out in the evening,
in winter. In January, 1801, one of Sally's letters contains this
passage : —
" I sing but little now to what I did once, and indeed
I think all my energy is weaken'd since I have ceas'd to give
delight to the three beings who were dearest to me on earth ;
one is gone for ever, the second is as dead to me, and the third
no longer takes the same delight in me she once did."
The last reference is to the mother in whose absence, two
years later, she wrote, " home wants more than half its comforts
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 203
while she is away." Between mother and daughter, a little
cloud had gradually risen, as to Lawrence. While Mrs. Siddons
was still nervously warding off any likelihood of a meeting
between him and ' the best beloved of her heart,' her ' adorable
Sally/ she herself, acknowledging to Mrs. Pennington that 'a
corner of her heart still yearned towards this unhappy creature,'
and away from her house and family, renewed friendly relations
with him. To the disquietude of Sally, and the disapproval of
intimates acquainted with the facts, she saw him in her room
at the theatre, almost every evening. But she brought home
scarcely any news, and no messages. She could never clear
her mind of the suspicion that Sally would — to her certain
unhappiness — relent if she came under his spell. Each woman
must have thought the other weaker than herself.
Things were remaining in this condition, but with Lawrence
quite cooled, and cherishing little more than a memory of Sally,
when, in May, 1802, her Drury Lane period finally ended, and
her Covent Garden period not yet begun, Mrs. Siddons, attended
by Patty Wilkinson, who had companioned her and Sally ever
since Maria's death, started for Ireland on a tour of considerable
duration. Sally was judged just not well enough to go. She
stayed in London, with her father ; her brother, George ; during
school holidays, little Cecy Siddons; and Dorothy Place,
another girl friend almost domiciled in Great Marlborough
Street.
Mrs. Siddons left home with a heavy heart. She was
oppressed by a presentiment of misfortune, and, since it was
natural she should fix her fears on the likeliest calamity, we
find her writing to Mrs. Piozzi : " . . . my eyes have dwelt with
a foreboding tenderness too painful, on the venerable face
of my dear father, that tells me I shall look on it no more."
Summer and autumn brought her letters calculated to
reassure her as to the welfare of those left behind. Sally's told
of jaunts with Bertie Greatheed and Charlie Moore, a l pic-nic'
in the Temple, Dorothy's new hat, ' a pretty cold supper,' late
hours, visits to the play — "how delightfully I laughed at
'Fortune's Frolic.'" It all sounded wholesome and young.
Henry Siddons's wedding took place during this same summer,
and Sally sent Patty a description of how Miss Murray looked
204 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
in her travelling wedding dress, how moist people's pocket
handkerchiefs were, how nervous Harry was — so nervous that
he ' shook,' how, nevertheless, he " was very ready to reply, and
cried out, ' I will,' " and wanted to put on the ring, before the
proper time.
Mrs. Siddons's three headquarters were Dublin, Cork, and
Belfast, and, in each, her popularity and profits were enormous.
The profits were wanted, for, in the late autumn, ' Sid ' wrote,
anxious as to ways and means, and begging her to accept
a Liverpool offer, unless she chose to extend her Dublin
engagement. There was a long bill for the decoration of
49 Great Marlborough Street, and George needed a costly outfit
for India. Upon this, the money-maker arranged to keep on
in Dublin for the winter. On December 9th, the news came to
her of Roger Kemble's death on the 6th. The comforting and
rational promise, " Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children,"
was not to be fully verified to her.
In February, 1803, in Dublin, Mrs. Siddons had the — in part,
heart-aching — pleasure of a fortnight's visit from her son,
George, just before his departure for Bengal. "Their mutual
smiles," wrote Patty Wilkinson, " were often more affecting than
any tears." They never met again.
Not till almost mid-March did any suggestion reach
Ireland that Sally (of whom George's news had been good)
was acutely, and, this time, mortally stricken. On March loth,
Mr. Siddons wrote to Patty Wilkinson, but begged her to say
nothing to alarm his wife. Patty, trusting her own judgment
in preference to his, showed Mrs. Siddons the letter, and
Mrs. Siddons determined to throw everything over, and hasten
home. Unhappily, the gale was so contrary, that, for days,
boats could not put out. A brighter report, meanwhile, arrived
from 'Sid,' who — unforgivably callous, at such a juncture, in
thinking solely of gain — urged Mrs. Siddons not to abandon
a pending engagement at Cork. On this, she proceeded to
Cork, whence she wrote to Mrs. Fitzhugh in London : —
"... Would to God I were at her bedside ! . . . Will you
believe that I must play to-night, and can you imagine any
wretchedness like it in this terrible state of mind? For a
moment I comfort myself by reflecting on the strength of
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 205
the dear creature's constitution. . . . Then again, when I think
of the frail tenure of human existence, my heart fails, and
sinks into dejection. . . . The suspense that distance keeps
me in, you may imagine, but it cannot be described."
There was no telegraph, and, in those ante-steamship,
ante-railway days, Ireland was more distant from London
than Seville is now. After further days of bad weather and
delayed packet service, an unfavourable bulletin reached Mrs.
Siddons. In contrast to her husband, her Cork Manager, Pero,
showed himself sympathetic and generous regarding the
breaking of his bargain, and, having settled this, she returned
— in the hope of a possible sea-passage — to Dublin, where,
again, she had to await a change of wind. In her anguish, she
wrote to Mrs. Fitzhugh : —
" I am perfectly astonished . . . that I have not heard from
you, after begging it so earnestly. ... I cannot account for
your silence at all, for you know how to feel. I hope to sail
to-night, and to reach London the third day. . . . Oh God !
what a home to return to ... and what a prospect to the end of
my days ! "
When, at last, she had got as far on her journey as
Shrewsbury, she was met by a letter which boded the worst.
Two hours after Mr. Siddons wrote it, on March 24th, 1803,
Sally, at the age of twenty-seven, breathed her last. She had
been under the care of one of the leading doctors of the
day, Sir Lucas Pepys. Her death was, in all probability, due
to emphysema of the lungs, induced by the severity and
frequency of her paroxysms of asthma. Immediately she
was dead, some one was charged to carry the tidings to
Shrewsbury. Mrs. Siddons was reading her husband's latest
letter as Patty Wilkinson was called from the room. When
Patty returned, she had no need to speak. Her face told all.
For a day, Mrs. Siddons lay as cold and quiet as a stone,
in a state that may well have been the culmination of those
'desperate tranquillities,' that, in private, life were, she said,
her way of manifesting the tragedy within.
Three months later, we find her writing to Mrs. Galindo : —
"... the inscrutable ways of providence ! Two lovely
creatures gone, and another is just arrived from school with
206 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
all the dazzling, frightful sort of beauty that irradiated the
countenance of Maria, and makes me shudder when I look
at her. I feel myself like poor Niobe grasping to her bosom . . .
the last and younger of her children . . ."
This last and youngest was Cecilia, the only daughter, as
George was the only son, who survived Mrs. Siddons. Cecilia,
who was nine when Sally died, was Mrs. Piozzi's godchild, and
named after Cecilia Thrale. Dr. Whalley was her godfather,
or, as she, when little, persistently said, her 'grandfather.' In
spite of the ' dazzling, frightful sort of beauty/ she was
preserved to be the comfort of her mother's declining years.
So faithfully did she play the home-keeping spinster princess
to her mother's widowed queen that people thought the role
absorbed her energies to an unfair extent. " Cecilia's life,"
wrote Fanny Kemble, " has been one enduring devotion and
self-sacrifice." In an unpublished letter from George Siddons,
dated Calcutta, 25th May, 1819, the writer inquires, "Is my
sister likely to get a mate, or is it her resolve to die a — miss ? "
Six months after Mrs. Siddons's death, Cecilia, * aged and
thin,' appeared, to her cousin Fanny, to have lost the one
idea of her whole life.
About eighteen months more elapsed, and, then, Cecilia,
aged thirty-nine, with £15, OCX), married George Combe, of
Edinburgh, who, till about 1837, when he retired, was a
Writer to the Signet. In 1828, Combe published a book,
The Constitution of Man in relation to External Objects,
which approached in circulation to the Bible, The Pilgrim's
Progress, and Robinson Crusoe. We recall Fanny Kemble's
statement as to ' the very decided character ' of her cousin,
Cecilia's, face when we read that Combe had no idea of risking
matrimony until he had thoroughly examined his lady-love's
head, and found her ' anterior lobe to be large, her
Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Firmness, Self-esteem, and Love
of Approbation amply developed ; whilst her Veneration and
Wonder were equally moderate with his own.' In consequence,
or in spite, of these discoveries, the marriage proved happy.
The phrenologist died in 1858; Cecilia died (without issue) on
February ipth, 1868.
Henry, the eldest of Mrs. Siddons's children, who, after
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 207
the Charterhouse, was, like his sisters, sent to France, had an
unconquerable taste for drama. At fifteen, he wrote an
interlude called Modern Breakfast, which was acted at Mrs.
Stephen Kemble's benefit. Five years later, he dramatised —
and, says Genest, ' dramatised most vilely ' — 'Anne Radcliffe's A
Sicilian Romance. However poor, the piece was produced at
Covent Garden. In secondhand booksellers' we may see —
without feeling constrained to purchase — a work, en titled Practical
illustrations of rhetorical gesture and action, adapted to the English
drama, From a work on the same subject by M. Engel, Member
of the Royal Academy of Berlin. By Henry Siddons. 1807.
Madame Mere strongly desired that her elder son would
enter the Church, but the stage magnetised him, and, in the
summer of 1801, he was acting with her in the provinces,
preparatory to a winter season at Covent Garden. On
October 8th, he made his first London appearance, as the hero
of Integrity, a comedy newly adapted from the German. Ever
diffident and nervous, young Siddons is said to have begged
the speaker of the prologue to intercede with the audience in
his favour, but this was refused. Strengthened by his name,
he made a tolerably successful de"but. The letters his mother
wrote, at the time, to Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Fitzhugh are
touching in their anxiety and would-be pride, combining with
prescience, mute, but manifest, that Harry would never become
great.
As a matter of fact, the 'Stranger' was the only part he
personated with success, and that because it suited his own
disposition, for, as Mrs. Siddons observed, he had 'a fine,
honorable, but alas ! melancholy character.' He possessed too
little self-confidence, or, perhaps, as some one said, too fine a
contexture of nerve. Upon finding him described as deficient
'in his voice, form, and face,' the commentator may question
whether the force of deficiency could go farther. Gait, when
quite young, saw Harry play Macbeth, at Durham, to the Lady
Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons, and noted : —
"Through all the performance she spoke as it were in a
suppressed voice, that seemed to lend additional poetry to the
text. I afterwards, however, suspected that it was accidental.
Henry Siddons, her son, who performed Macbeth, was not a
208 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
judicious actor ; his emphasis was too boisterous, and it might
be that she assumed the undertone . . . from a desire to
moderate his loud vehemence ; at least, I never heard her speak
in the same key again."
Harry married a great-granddaughter of that John Murray
of Broughton who, after being Prince Charles Edward's
Secretary, became ' Mr. Evidence Murray.' The marriage was
happy, Harriet Murray was an agreeable actress, and we need
only to consult the first volume of Record of a Girlhood to find
what sunshine she diffused in her home. None of the Harry
Siddons' three children took to acting. When they were little,
Grandmother Siddons was going to play Coriolanus, in Edin-
burgh, and wanted to bring them (as one of them, when Mrs.
Mair, long afterwards remembered) on the stage, but their
father would not consent.
It was owing to Walter Scott's cordiality that, in 1809,
Siddons became lessee and Manager of the New Theatre
Royal, Edinburgh, and we may guess Scott's enthusiasm when
his friend's son produced, as his first new play, Joanna Baillie's
The Family Legend^ propped by Mrs. Siddons. " Siddons* is a
good lad," he told Joanna Baillie, "and deserves success."
Even this warm backer could not away with Harry's own play,
produced in March, 1810 — "it was such a thing as if I or you
had written it ... would have been damned seventyfold," he
wrote to Miss Baillie.
On April I2th, 1815, while still Edinburgh Manager, Harry
Siddons died, of consumption, at forty-one. He left, said his
mother, "a sphere of painful and anxious existence with which
he was ill calculated to struggle." Mr. Leigh permits me to
reproduce an unpublished letter (facing p. 218), addressed by
Mrs. Siddons to Mrs. Piozzi, shortly after his death. It is a
letter that shows an already venerably resigned attitude towards
'Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow,'
and shows, too, Mrs. Siddons's power of writing nobly.
Though she bore calamities with the equal mind of some
Cornelia of old, none the less she felt them.
In 1803, or late in 1802, her consistent patron, the Prince
HER HUSBAND AND CHILDREN 209
of Wales, gave her second son, George Siddons, an Indian
cadetship, and, almost immediately after, a writership, which,
in the interval, fell vacant. I have before me a sheet of
voluminous MS. letters, the property of Mr. Horace Twiss, that
were written by George, from Sumatra and Calcutta, to his
cousin * Nol ' (Horace) Twiss. The ingrained Civilian, with his
Anglo-Indian jests, grievances, conventional propriety, stoicism,
and home-sickness, speaks through them. George became
Collector of Calcutta Government Customs, and married a lady
who, on one side, derived her blood from the Kings of Delhi.
India was destined to absorb an extraordinary number of
Mrs. Siddons's descendants. In Notes and Queries, for January
1st, 1887, appeared a letter from the late Colonel H. G. F.
Siddons, George Siddons's grandson, which showed that the
Siddons race was, then, in no immediate danger of ceasing to
obey the Divine injunction to replenish the earth. The courtesy
of the Editor of Notes and Queries enables me to quote from
this interesting document, as follows : —
"... Sarah Siddons (the tragedienne} left three children
who married, namely, Henry, George, and Cecilia.
" Of these, Henry married Miss Murray, and left issue (a)
Henry Siddons, of the Bengal Engineers, who married his
cousin, Harriott Siddons (below named), and left one child,
Sarah Siddons, now living, unmarried. (£) Sarah, who married
William Grant, of Rothiemercus, and left no issue, (c) Elizabeth,
who married Major Mair, of Edinburgh, and left a son and four
daughters.
" Mrs. Siddons's second son, George, of the Bengal Civil
Service, married Miss Fombelle, and left issue (a) Frances, who
married Professor Horace Wilson, and left six daughters, (fr)
George Siddons, of the Bengal Cavalry, who left one child,
Mary, married to J. Hawtrey, and now living, (c) Harriott,
who married her cousin, Henry Siddons, and left one child,
Sarah Siddons, above named, (d) Sarah, who married William
Young, of the Bengal Civil Service, is now living, and has two
sons and two daughters, (e) Henry Siddons, of the Madras
Cavalry, who left one child, Henry Siddons (the undersigned),
now living, married. (/) William Siddons, of the Bengal Native
Infantry, who left four children, all now living, namely, Mary
210 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Scott S-iddons, who married, but resumed the name ; Harriott
Siddons, unmarried; William Siddons of the Bengal Un-
covenanted Service, who is married and has two daughters ;
and Henry Siddons, unmarried, (g) Mary, who married Robert
Thornhill, of the Bengal Civil Service, and was killed at
Cawnpore, leaving two sons and one daughter. . . .
HENRY G. F. SIDDONS
Major, Royal Artillery
Liverpool "
XV
FRIENDS
APART my heroine admirably sustained, that of Mrs.
Siddons, she enacted before two widely contrasted
generations. Her early approver, Dr. Johnson, passed
away with the year 1784, and the eighteenth century died
with him. A short silence fell, and then,
"Scattering the past about,
Comes the new age"
— a wigless age, presided over by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Byron.
The reserve, the shut-up-ness occasional observers depre-
cated in Mrs. Siddons disappeared when she was with the
few people outside her family to whom she was genuinely
attached. We have seen how warm were her expressions of
affection towards the Whalleys. Another person she admitted
into full confidence was Hester Lynch Piozzi, whom she
addressed as 'my beloved friend' and 'dear soul,' while Mrs.
Piozzi, in return, referred to her as 'dear Siddons,' 'charming
Siddons.' When, in 1782, Mrs. Piozzi, then Mrs. Thrale, first
met the actress, she said, in her crisp way, to her 'Tyo,'
alluding to Mrs. Siddons's heavy manner, " This is a leaden
goddess we are all worshipping! however, we shall soon gild
it." Sober-sided, deliberate Mrs. Siddons and volatile, berouged
Mrs. Thrale only became intimate after the latter was married
(* ignominiously married,' Johnson, after the event, absurdly
told her) to Piozzi. Mrs. Siddons did not expect to care
much for Mrs. Piozzi, she told Lady Harcourt, in 1790, but
an unexpectedly prolonged stay of three weeks at Streatham
completely won her. Concerning her, Mrs. Piozzi wrote, in
212 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
1 80 1, "the longer one knows that incomparable creature the
more reasons spring up to esteem and love her." The two
ladies were complementary to each other, rather than obviously
sympathetic. Johnson's Thralia — to quote Mr. Birrell's phrase
— was the older in years, Mrs. Siddons in temperament.
The Miss Thrales appear to have been the last visitors
admitted to Maria Siddons before she died, and Lawrence,
who was resenting everything, hated to hear of the descent
upon the sick-room of these * mannish women/ with their crass
glances and ' shock'd ' inquiries. Their mother, with her tact
of discernment, foresaw that Mr. Siddons's grief over Maria's
death would be deeper-seated and more corroding than Mrs.
Siddons's.
Of all the people with whom Mrs. Siddons, in her earlier
days, was intimately thrown, Mrs. Inchbald was the most
interesting. She possessed far more personality than she
could distil even into nineteen plays and that still captivating
novel, A Simple Story. As an actress, she was, naturally,
beside Mrs. Siddons, 'a waxen taper in the solar blaze.'
There is a well-known story as to how, coming off the stage,
one evening, she was about to sit next Melpomene in the
greenroom, when, suddenly, looking at her, she exclaimed,
" No, I won't s-s-s-sit by you ; you're t-t-t-too handsome ! "
In her curiously unoffending candour resided a great deal of
pretty, freckled Mrs. Inchbald's peculiar charm. The Kembles
and Twisses all loved her, and addressed her as 'dear Muse.'
Lamb spoke of her as the only endurable clever woman he
had ever known.
When Mrs. Inchbald had turned hardworking authoress,
and Mrs. Siddons was moving among social stars of the first
magnitude, occasional complaints were made of the latter's
giving little to her 'old* friends save 'recollections.' Such com-
plaints did not necessarily convict her of worldliness. "You
know too well what a hurried life mine is, to need apology
for this hasty, almost unintelligible scrawl," she wrote, on one
occasion, and, with what she might well call, in writing to
Mrs. Pennington, her ' numerous claims,' it was equally impos-
sible for her to see the same persons often. At another time,
we find her begging Whalley to 'impute anything to her
FRIENDS 213
rather than suppose that any earthly circumstance of wealth,
or honour, or grandeur, or any other nonsense of the kind,
could abate her esteem and love ' for him and Mrs. Whalley.
The strongest impression derivable from Boaden's mostly
twaddling ' Memoirs ' of Mrs. Inchbald is that of her life-
long, self-denying frugality, which seemed uncalled for, in
view of her considerable literary earnings. Frequent in-
vestments in the Reduced Annuities and Long Annuities
were her sole personal luxuries. On the other hand, she
was ceaselessly liberal to very unsatisfactory sisters — there
was nothing in relation to her thriving, but herself, says
her biographer. Through all her battles, she preserved her
capacity for 'larkiness.' Aged thirty-five, she enters in her
journal, " On the 29th of June (Sunday) dined, drank tea,
and supped with Mrs. Whitfield. At dark, she and I and her
son William walked out. I rapped at doors in New Street
and King Street and ran away." Nothing sayable in few
words, descriptively, as to Mrs. Inchbald would render her
as clearly ' seen J as a couple of extracts from her letters. To
her friend, Mrs. Phillips, she indited this caustic aphorism : —
" I think, in your determinations concerning your children,
you do not sufficiently consider . . . how much more than
upon all your poor efforts for their welfare, their success will
depend upon chance. Still, do the best you can ; and then
call that chance by the name of Providence, and submit to it."
Touchingly, and freshly, in one of her later letters, she
wrote : "It is only in the promises of the Gospel that I can
ever hope to be young and beautiful again."
One of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie's 'sibyls,' Mrs. Opie, was
a fervent friend of Mrs. Siddons's, though, after she left
8 Berners Street, upon Opie's death, in 1807, and resettled
with her father in Norwich, there, later, to become a dove-
grey, always pleasantly coquettish, Quakeress, she only saw
her London intimates when she made those periodic descents
of hers into the metropolitan whirlpool which suggest to the
reader of her letters a vegetarian convert's lapses in the
direction of supr ernes de votaille. Mrs. Inchbald thought Mrs.
Opie cleverer than her books, which may well have been the
case. The long list of her lovers and friends makes it clear
214 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
that she was a delightful creature to be with. In 1798, John
Opie, R.A., became her husband. Mrs. Siddons used to say,
" I like to meet Mr. Opie ; for then I always hear something
I did not know before." Opie's (see illustration to face p. 184)
is the only portrait of William Siddons that has rewarded a
diligent search.
Opie's widow testified how warm had been her regard for
Mrs. Siddons, when — after the death of the latter — being
shown, in Sir John Soane's Museum, a plaster life cast
(curiously open-lipped) from the retired actress's face that
still hangs there, she broke into a passion of tears.
Another friend of Mrs Siddons's was that woman-souled
and man-minded little lady, Joanna Baillie. Drama was
Miss Baillie's star, and she was dreaming of Mrs. Siddons
when she wrote De Montfort. The description of Jane de
Montfort's appearance, in Act II. Scene i, is a description
of the actual Mrs. Siddons's in 1 800 : —
Lady. — How looks her countenance?
Page. — So queenly, so commanding, and so noble,
I shrunk at first in awe ; but when she smil'd,
For so she did to see me thus abash'd,
Methought I could have compass'd sea and land
To do her bidding.
Lady. — Is she young or old ?
Page. — Neither, if right I guess ; but she is fair :
For Time hath laid his hand so gently on her,
As he too had been aw'd.
Lady. — Is she large in stature?
Page. — So stately and so graceful is her form,
I thought at first her stature was gigantic;
But on a near approach I found, in truth,
She scarcely does surpass the middle size
as she moves
Wide flows her robe in many a waving fold,
As I have seen unfurled banners play
With a soft breeze."
Though De Montfort failed to grip the public, Mrs. Siddons
naturally loved the glorified herself that was her part in it.
" Make me some more Jane de Montforts ! " she said to Joanna
Baillie.
In her Recollections of the Past> Mrs. Mair preserves the
record of a religious correspondence that passed between
FRIENDS 215
Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Siddons, in later life. The former
had seen cause to modify her early view on some minor tenets
of orthodoxy, a fact she thought it right to communicate to
so near a friend. Mrs. Siddons received the news of the
changes in her outlook, not uncharitably, but with the
characteristic parenthesis, " I still hold fast my own faith
without wavering."
Hannah More's is a name which, particularly during its
bearer's mundane first period, belonged to the Garrick circle.
At several points, later, it impinged on the orbit of Sarah
Siddons. The lady whom, in 1781, Mrs. Garrick called her
Chaplain, resembled Mrs. Opie in becoming, as time went
on, more avowedly 'strict.' By 1787, she refused to go to
see her own tragedy, Percy^ when it was revived, even with
that paragon of decorum, Mrs. Siddons, as its heroine. From
letters included in their respective biographies we find that
Mrs. Siddons's 'affectionate friend, Hannah More,' used to
send her copies of her works, and further 'encourage and
cheer' her way (the quoted words are Mrs. Siddons's) (to
the better world.'
" I have heard," Miss More wrote to her, from Barley
Wood, in 1811, "that you consider the Bible as your
treasure. May it continue to be your guide through life, and
your support in that inevitable hour which awaits us all. It
has pleased God to bless my little book [probably, a new
edition of Sacred Dramas] with a degree of success which I
had no reason to expect."
Anna Seward burnt voluminous incense before Mrs.
Siddons. With a letter, inviting her, on her way from Bir-
mingham, to stay a few days at Lichfield, or, in Sewardian
diction, entreating the honour of the Siddons sleeping beneath
her roof, she enclosed a twelve-lined sonnet (addressed by
the Same to the Same) which had * descended,' she said, that
morning, ' from her pen.'
"Behold, dividing still the palm of Fame,
Her radiant Science, and her spotless Life ! "
thus, for an inflated 'Swan/ rather neatly, she wound up
the lines. The Swan of Lichfield came, at times, so perilously
216 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
near writing herself down its goose, that we are apt to under-
value sound and shrewd observations that, betweenwhiles,
' descended ' — to employ again her mountebank phraseology —
from her tireless pen and tongue.
Like Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, and other ladies
of original minds and irreproachable morals, Mrs. Siddons
visited at the house of Sir Ralph and Lady Noel Milbanke
(afterwards Noel), and became interested in their reticent,
almond-eyed daughter, "almost the only young, pretty,
well-dressed girl we ever saw who carried no cheerfulness
along with her."1 To Mrs. Siddons, at the close of 1814,
Annabel Milbanke wrote to announce her engagement to
Byron, and her letter, noted Mrs. Siddons's granddaughter,
Mrs. Mair, who owned it, was ' so full of hope that the results
which so soon followed seemed sad indeed.' The best
sympathetic account of Lady Byron — the Lady Annabel
Herbert of Disraeli's Venetia — to be met with forms one of
Harriet Martineau's 'Biographical Sketches' (1868). Lady
Byron had strong private-life admiration for Mrs. Siddons,
and, with Lady Noel, both visited her, and was visited by
her at the Noels' house at Kirkby Mallory, Leicestershire.
Of all Mrs. Siddons's friends, the most adoring was Mrs.
William Fitzhugh. She was a sister of the William Hamilton
who rescued the Rosetta Stone from the French, shipped the
Elgin Marbles for England, and became the official successor,
after an interval of twenty-two years, of a better known name-
sake at the court of Naples. For years, Mrs. Fitzhugh played
henchwoman to Mrs. Siddons. In London, she tried to be
with her all day, and spent the evening in her dressing-room
at the theatre. She corresponded incessantly with her, and
never willingly let a year pass without entertaining her at
her husband's place, Bannister Lodge, near Southampton.
From there, in 1803, Mrs. Siddons wrote to the Galindos :
"... My dear Mrs. Fitzhugh grudges every moment that
I am not by her side." For her was painted Lawrence's
' handsome dark cow ' whole-length of Mrs. Siddons reading
Paradise Lost, which Mrs. Siddons, strange to say, thought
1 The Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness. By the Rev. A. G.
L'Estrange, 23. 1871.
FRIENDS 217
'more really like' her 'than anything that has been done.'
The portrait was in the Bannisters dining-room, where Fanny
Kemble used to sit under it, when she, in her turn, went there
on visits to * comical old . . . Mrs. F a not very judicious
person,' and ' Mrs. F 's ' daughter, Emily, who was Fanny's
great friend. To Mrs. Fitzhugh were committed Mrs.
Siddons's 'Remarks' on Lady Macbeth, and by her they
were handed over to Campbell, for inclusion in the official
biography. Mrs. Fitzhugh's husband sat in five Parliaments for
Tiverton. In the following unpublished letter (placed at
my disposal by Mr. Horace Twiss) Mrs. Siddons is endeavour-
ing to make the most of his interest on behalf of her nephew.
A true aunt's letter, its recommendation of ' Self esteem ' is
a delightful Kemble touch : —
"[1809?] Sunday night, Twelve tf clock
" MY DEAR HORACE, — I have had a great deal of talk with
Mr. F : about you, and whatever it is, that is in meditation I
am quite sure that his report will be favourable ; I pray God
that it may be efficacious ! You will be invited to dinner soon
and I need not suggest to you to remember (with modesty and
sobriety) that 'oftimes nothing profits more than Self esteem
grounded on just and right.'
"You know my dear Horace how much your honor and
welfare interest me and therefore you will excuse me for desir-
ing you to remember that Mr. Fitzhugh is a wise, Steady-
headed man, and I shoud imagine him very likely to take
disgust at any little flippancy or frivolity that a thousand others
would overlook and excuse as the overflowing of youthful
spirits, And ' oh reform it altogether.'
" God bless and prosper you ! S. S.
" Mrs. F. still insists that she has often askd you to call, and
mentioned particularly, having done so when she met you one
evening at Mrs. Opie's. — when I told her I was sure some
mistake must have prevented you from availing yourself of
what I was quite sure you would recieve as an honor and a
gratification — She said the servants were so negligent that it
was not impossible that you might have calld, and they having
mislaid your Card, and you finding no notice taken of your visit,
had naturally thought no more about it. — I said it was very
likely to be so — And so now you may call or not as seems
best to your own feeling."
218 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
A better known name in the list Campbell gives of persons
he saw oftenest at Mrs. Siddons's, during her last fifteen years,
is that of Sir George and Lady Beaumont. A prominent
picture collector, a member of the Society of Dilettanti, a man
to be thought of with Lock of Norbury, and Hope of 'the
Deep Dene,' himself an amateur artist of taste, albeit obsessed
by his 'brown tree,' Sir George Beaumont is best entitled to
remembrance because, had he never painted his picture of
Peele Castle, in a Storm, we might have missed one of the
most beautiful of English poems. No less than ten of the out-
pourings of Wordsworth's muse are concerned either with
Beaumont or his domain at Coleorton, Leicestershire. A
collateral descendant of the dramatist of his name, Sir
George had an innate love of drama, and we understand
the attraction that led him to Mrs. Siddons's house, when we
read (in Wordsworth's ' Elegiac Musings ' over his departed
friend's diffident, self-chosen epitaph) l how he could give, in
reading Shakespeare to a circle,
' with eye, voice, mien,
More than theatric force to Shakspeare's scene.'
We have seen how little cause Mrs. Siddons had to like the
waspish Steevens. Another editor of Shakespeare, of whose
friendship she was, on the contrary, proud, was Edmond
Malone, and of his strongly contrasted 'elegance' (i.e.
suavity) of manner both she and Kemble used to talk
admiringly.
In Campbell's list of the habitues of Mrs. Siddons's drawing-
room we find the name of the Rev. Sydney Smith — whom
Amelia Opie called the ever welcome. It is pleasant to know
that the hostess's renowned seriousness was no repelling force
for the rational, benevolent, and gladsome Dr. Anti-Cant who
said that ' the gods do not bestow such a face as Mrs. Siddons'
on the stage more than once in a century.' In an ' Edinburgh '
of 1809, we find Sydney Smith less informally lauding her, in
her public capacity, in these words : " Where is every feeling
more roused in favour of virtue than at a good play ? Where
is goodness so feelingly, so enthusiastically learnt? What
1 "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord!"
FRIENDS 219
so solemn as to see the excellent passions of the human heart
called forth by a great actor, animated by a great poet ? To
hear Siddons repeat what Shakspeare wrote?" The first time
Sydney Smith met Mrs. Siddons, he amused her so much that
she, albeit unused to the shaking mood, threw herself back,
and laughed so heartily and lengthily, "that it made quite a
scene, and all the company were alarmed."
Among Mrs. Siddons's regular callers was the chartered
punster, Joseph Jekyll. Jekyll's wit, said Rogers, was of the
kind which amused only for a moment. He cited, in proof,
that when the eccentric and kleptomaniac Lady Cork (erst-
while, the Hon. Mary Monckton and Dr. Johnson's dearest
dunce) appeared in an enormous plume, Jekyll remarked, ' she
was exactly a shuttlecock — all cork and feathers.' Among the
tea-cups and wax lights of one of Lady Cork's parties, Mrs.
Siddons and Jekyll first met, and Campbell gives a sparkling
letter from the latter to the former, referring to the occasion, in
terms that must have been strained, since they adumbrate his
correspondent as a queen of banter.
William Harness, Vicar of All Saints', Knightsbridge, was a
familiar friend of the Kemble group, especially of Mrs. Siddons.
He edited Shakespeare, and, after his death, a memorial to his
memory took the form of a prize founded at Cambridge for the
study of Shakespearean literature. He was one of that ever
winning type of clergymen who avowedly take the optimist view
of the world and life. Dilexit multum.
Byron's first words to Harness, then a pale little newcomer
to Harrow, were, " If any fellow bullies you, tell me; and I'll
thrash him if I can." We are bound to love Harness because
he loved Byron, and, unlike Lady Byron, knew how to manage
him, and bring out his best. " There can be no doubt," said he,
" that Byron was a little ' maddish.' "
Among the more distinguished of Mrs. Siddons's admirers
was the Hon. Thomas Erskine, afterwards Baron Erskine and
Lord Chancellor. His dates (1750-1823) nearly synchronise
with hers, and a letter, signed A B, in the Courier of August
26th, 1823, states, on one knows not what authority, that
Tom Erskine 'and a few literary friends at the bar' were
instrumental in her removal from Bath, in 1782, back to the
220 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
wider sphere of Drury Lane. Fanny Burney has told how
Erskine ' boomed ' Mrs. Siddons — and in Mrs. Siddons's presence
— at Miss Monckton's, in 1782, talking, across her, of her artistic
excellences. He was, at all events, so much more tactful in
praise than the surrounding ' blues,' that Mrs. Siddons, in her
account of this Sunday evening menagerie, described his
' benevolent politeness ' as a relief and deliverance from the
other guests' cruder lionisation.
Few men, belonging to the modern world, have had a
more meteoric career than Erskine, and more forcibly dominated
people and circumstances by sheer cleverness. It was no
lesser leaf in our actress's laurel crown of eulogies from the
great that this incomparable advocate, whose ' little twelvers'
in the jury-box found it, said Brougham, impossible to look
away from him when once riveted by his glance and first
word, should have declared that from Mrs. Siddons he learnt
his effective cadences and modulations of voice.
A story told by Whalley further associates Erskine's name
with Mrs. Siddons's. One evening, in the Brussels theatre,
during the winter of 1786-87, Whalley, fresh from reading
Lavater, was gazing at the faces round, ' by Lavater's rules/
His physiognomic interest presently became concentrated on
a gentleman, who, taking a place by him, began talking to
him, in French, of the stage generally, and, before long, of
Mrs. Siddons. Whalley observed —
" that she shone [it was his happy illusion] both in tragedy
and in comedy, and that she was not only eminent on the stage,
but irreproachable in her private character, elegant in her
address, and in her conversation showed a fine and cultivated
understanding. They both agreed that it was not common
for persons so to shine in different stations and accomplish-
ments, although there was indeed, said Mr. Whalley, an instance
of the same person shining in different professions (navy, army,
and law) — the English Erskine. ' Erskine ? ' said the gentle-
man ; ' I am Erskine ! ' '
By an incident, conveying rich indications to the Comic
Spirit (as defined by George Meredith), Mrs. Siddons suddenly
became, not only a friend, but, in the phrase of ' George
Fasten,1 a * Mascotte,' to impracticable, fighting Haydon.
FRIENDS 221
Haydon, so much more salient a writer than a painter,
gives the incident in his autobiography, where it forms the
culmination of his story of a desperate artist's hopes, fears,
and preparations for making known what he believed his
masterpiece. This was Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, ex-
hibited, in 1820, at the Egyptian Hall, as a one-man, and
one-picture, show. Every occurrence, even in the hanging
of the picture, is given in Haydon's intense narration. Duns
were pressing, patrons weary, Academy folk hostile, or cold.
At last, the critical Saturday, Private View Day, arrived.
During the earlier morning, the artist went into the Egyptian
Hall, and, to his mortification, found no one but the attendants.
When, at half-past twelve, he stole in again, and heard that
Sir William Scott had been in, his spirits revived. "He
always brings everybody." By half-past three, there was
a steady stream of the society world, and Haydon (after two
glasses of sherry) hastened inside, mingling with 'princes of
the blood, bishops, and noblemen.' From the Persian Envoy,
who exclaimed, " I like the elbow of soldier," everybody
praised something. But, as yet, no definite opinion was to
be heard on the * unorthodox ' chief figure. In the middle of
the afternoon, Enter Mrs. Siddons.
A silence fell on the crowd, while the still magnificent-
looking woman — Mike a Ceres or a Juno/ says Haydon —
contemplated the picture. Then, Sir George Beaumont
timidly asked her, " How do you like the Christ ? " and
everybody waited. After a moment, she said, in her deep,
distinct voice, " It is completely successful." At this, Haydon
was presented, and, in the same tones, she added, now speaking
to him, "The paleness gives it a supernatural look." Simple
words, but they turned the scale. They were repeatable.
The success of the exhibition was secured. It is, in passing,
interesting to find that Mrs. Siddons's prestige — her glamour
in the eyes of society — so long outlasted her retirement from
the stage.
Haydon wrote his delighted gratitude to Mrs. Siddons
(whom he addressed as 'great high priestess at the shrine of
Nature') and, in reply, received a pressing invitation to call.
Thus, he describes the visit : —
222 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
" It was like speaking to the mother of the gods. I told
her when a boy I had crept below the orchestra door at
Plymouth theatre, and squeezed up underneath the stage box
... to see her perform the Mother in Lillo's ' Cornish Tragedy.'
She was pleased."
Afterwards, he besought ' the mother of the gods ' to come,
whenever a picture of his was * exhibiting/ In 1846, he was
buried where he had buried his children, near the grave of
Mrs. Siddons in Paddington ' new ' churchyard. His life had
been, in Mrs. Browning's phrase, 'one long agony of self-
assertion/
Thomas Campbell, introduced to Mrs. Siddons by Charles
Moore, became the favourite friend of her declining years.
In spite of the sloppiness and omissions of his ' Life ' of her,
and although Mrs. Mair found he 'had lost the power of
reproducing, what long intimacy should have enabled him to
do,' our knowledge of Mrs. Siddons, especially during her
latest period, would be very considerably less, lacking his
personal memories.
In P. G. Patmore's My Friends and Acquaintance it is
stated that Campbell never did more for the Life of Mrs.
Siddons^ nominally his, than * overlook the manuscript ' and
c look over the proof-sheets/ This statement was, to an extent,
disproved by a correspondence between Campbell and the
Rev. Thomas Price, published in the ' Literary Remains ' of
the latter. 'The poet Campbell' took a considerable amount
of trouble over a task he performed in heaviness. Always a
man of laborious finish, by 1832 his dilatoriness had become
a vice. Also, the lapse of time had dimmed the impression
of the elastic day, when, as Mrs. Mair records, he was heard
suddenly to say to her grandmother, "O what a privilege it
would be to be allowed to write your life," and Mrs. Siddons's
reply was, " Then you shall do it." Campbell, certainly, tried,
at the end of 1832, to engage J. P. Collier to collaborate with
him, but Collier, scenting much work in the proposal and
seeing little profit — Campbell offered £100 — refused.
Kemble origins and his heroine's early circumstances
especially worried — as Campbell says, 'distressed' — him, and
his quest after something to fill his first chapter led him into
FRIENDS 223
two or three of those operose excursions into the needless of
which our grandsires were so much more tolerant in books
than we are. About eleven weeks after Mrs. Siddons's death,
the author of Hohenlinden opened a correspondence with that
amiable Vicar of Crickhowel who to the vulgar was known
as Thomas Price, but Carnhuanawc in the world of Bards.
Campbell told Price that he was 'obliged at Mrs. Siddonss
bequest to write a memoir/ and that he was graveled for lack of
matter relating to Brecon. Regarding birthplace, he inquired,
"The family of the Kembles cannot inform me in what
particular house or street of the town she was born — Is any
tradition respecting her preserved in the place ? . . . Something
is whispered about her having been born in a house most
vulgarly called the haunch of mutton."
To this and further inquiries Campbell's * learned Cambrian
friend' sent an ample reply, and enclosed a drawing (facing
p. 2) of Mrs. Siddons's birth-house, as he could remember it
before it was rebuilt.
In his exhilaration at raking in so much stuff to spread
over his pages, Campbell " felt as if he had known " his
correspondent "twenty years." He went on to describe him-
self as ' Mrs. Siddons's biographical undertaker/ which sounds
like an adverse augury for what he wished, he said, to make
'a light popular book.' Three months later, he was still
in pursuit of copy for the first chapter, and, by that time,
had run down the Catholic martyr, Father Kemble, as to
whose end he only wished he could prove he had been
burnt, and not hanged.
When her daughters were marriageable, and even earlier,
Mrs. Siddons gave evening parties. Thus, in 1791, she "did
the honours of her house to fifty people, till near 2 in the
morning," and, twice, during 1805, Mrs. Inchbald was her
guest at a dinner, followed by a rout.1 In Mr. Hardy's
drama of nations, The Dynasts, in the scene at Windsor,
after the doctors have visited King George in his padded
room, Sir Henry Halford breaks up their consultation with
the words, " I want to get back to town. . . . Mrs. Siddons has
1 Inchbald, ii. 80. Mrs. Inchbald usually dined with the Siddonses on
Christmas Day.
224 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
a party at her house at Westbourne to-night, and all the
world is going to be there." Merely predatory lion-hunters
Mrs. Siddons avoided — like ' Dictionary Johnson ' — with
animus, but she delighted to consort with people with
ideas.
In her intervals of leisure, she stayed a great deal at
'seats.' Half her letters seem dated from this Park or
t'other Rectory. Seven successive Christmases were spent
with the Earl and Countess of Arran, at Arran Lodge,
Bognor; at the Earl of Darnley's, at Cobham Hall, where
she conversed with Prince Leopold and H.R.H. the Duchess
of Kent, her seventy-second birthday was (too fatiguingly
for her) celebrated with Shakespearean and musical honours,
and twenty-three people at dinner. All this was gratifying,
yet one feels convinced that, with her deep feeling for associ-
ation and her sentiment of continuity, the house in which
she loved best to recruit (in Campbell's phrase) her impaired
stamina was Guy's Cliffe, 'that truly charming, and to me
uncommonly interesting place,' as she called it.
The last entry for 1809 in Windham's Diary is as follows:
" Dr. Ferris . . . sent over . . . Mrs. Galando's ' Letters ' ;
a foolish slander, as it seems, against Mrs. Siddons." Though
Mrs. Siddons's entire circle, and all other people of sense,
took the same view as Windham, r Affaire Galindo caused
Mrs. Siddons so much vexation, that, small and base in
itself, it has to be described, and, perhaps, both to biographer
and reader, may be allowed one passing gleam of wicked
gratification at its disclosure of a sporadic vanity and
obtuseness in one so generally impeccable as ' S. Siddons.'
In 1809, appeared a pamphlet, bearing, for title, Mrs.
Galindo 's letter to Mrs. Siddons: being a circumstantial detail
of Mrs. Siddons^ s life for the last seven years ; with several of
her letters. The pamphlet was no less than an allegation
of misconduct on the part of Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Galindo's
husband. It proved nothing beyond the irresponsible and
violent nature of its writer.
In a career, relatively, most tranquil, Mrs. Siddons had,
before 1809, already weathered a number of accusations.
As she said in 1786, she stood 'some knocks with tolerable
FRIENDS 225
firmness.' But the venomous Galindo pamphlet embodied
a new order of calumny. It was an attack upon the
'character' of a woman whose 'character' was her crown
and aegis, a woman with whom a man could no more fall
guiltily in love than with the Decalogue, a woman whose
presence was as instant a check on loose behaviour as Lady
Elizabeth Hastings's, a woman who had delivered to the
madcap who, one night, boarded her carriage as she was
leaving the theatre, the restorative, if somewhat blatant,
caution, "Mr. Sheridan, I trust that you will behave with
all propriety ; if you do not, I shall immediately let down the
glass, and desire the servant to show you out." And, now,
'the Majestic Siddons, to whom none dared express admira-
tion* (I quote the words of a contemporary Drury Lane
player), in the autumn of her beauty, large, august, and
matronly, was categorically charged with having caused
red ruin in the home of Mrs. Galindo, a minor tragedienne,
known as Miss Gough — 'sepulchral Gough,' Croker called
her in his youthful verses on Dublin performers.
Galindo, described as a personable, fine - limbed man,
young enough to be Mrs. Siddons's son, was a fencing-
master, in Bath. When his wife secured an engagement at
the Crow Street Theatre, he moved with her to Dublin,
and, during the earlier stage of the affair, he and she were
living there, in Leinster Street, with their young family,
and keeping a curricle and pair. We need not believe, with
the author of a tract, entitled Strictures on Mrs. Galindo's
Curious Letter to Mrs. Siddons ; that the behaviour of the
Galindos was a plot on their part for the purpose of raising
the wind, though the fact that Mrs. Galindo charged five
shillings for her pamphlet of eighty pages looks as though
she expected from it the harvest of a scandalous success.
During Mrs. Siddons's Irish engagements of 1802-3, when
the intimacy commenced, as well as later, when she was,
temporarily, at Hampstead, and the Galindos had come to
London, in anticipation of the Covent Garden engagement
she had promised Mrs. Galindo, she undoubtedly allowed
herself to be, to a ridiculous extent, accaparee by the pair,
particularly by the husband. She let him give her fencing
226 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
lessons, she let him — at a later date — borrow £1000 of her
(unknown to Mr. Siddons) for the purpose of setting him up
in the part proprietorship of the new Manchester Theatre,
she let him drive her about alone in Mrs. Galindo's curricle,
a vehicle round which the action of this unimportant comedy
seems to centre. It may be noted that in the selfsame year,
1802, when some of these indiscretions were being committed
in Ireland, Mrs. Siddons had just been passing through a
phase of weak philandering with Lawrence in London. She
was forty-seven, and though, at that climacteric, the hey-day
in the blood is tame, and waits upon the judgment, it is
equally an age when, with maturity about to sink, often
reluctantly enough, into elderliness, some final ebullience
of feminine foolishness may, perhaps, be allowed for. No
doubt, Galindo did sit adoring her,1 and, no doubt, the
attitude was 'rather disgusting'2 to his jealous, brooding
wife, but, certainly, there was egregious silliness in the follow-
ing conclusion of a letter of Mrs. Siddons's to him, dated
October i8th, 1803: "I have time only to add that I hope
you do not swear, and that you keep your beautiful hands
very clean ; remember me to pretty Julio [one of the curricle
horses], and now good night." Another sentence, equally
unworthy, from the same letter, ran thus : " Oh ! I have
suffered too much from a husband's unkindness, not to detest
the man who treats a creature ill that depends on her husband
for all her comforts."
Long before the defamatory ' letter ' appeared, Mrs. Siddons
had had cause to regret her flash of superannuated vanity.
When, in 1803, Kemble returned from Spain, he went to Mrs.
Inchbald, * like a madman,' saying that his sister had been
* imposed on by persons, whom it was a disgrace to her to
know! and begging Mrs. Inchbald ' to explain it so to her.' It
is clear that even John Philip, through whom Charles Kemble
used to ask trembling favours of her, dared not ( stand up to '
Mrs. Siddons, when it came to a fight. In 1809, Mrs. Galindo
published her imagined or pretended wrongs, and the press
stated, in its garbling way, that "John and Charles Kemble
have almost on their knees prayed Mrs. Siddons to prosecute
1 Mrs. Galindo's letter, 70. 2 Ibid.
FRIENDS 227
the parties, but she has peremptorily refused to do so, saying
that it is contrary to the principles of her religion? A more
accurate account of the family's attitude, and her own, concern-
ing what she described to Whalley as ' this diabolical business/
is obtainable from an unpublished letter written by her to her
nephew. Fortitude in difficulties was one of her strong
qualities.
" MY DEAR HORACE, — Patty tells me, you have been urging
the Prosecution of these people which surprisd me a good deal
now in the first place, It is the opinion, I do assure you upon
my honor, of all my friends, that it would be lowering myself,
to enter the lists with persons, the indecency of whose characters
is become so notorious, and in the next place, what would be
the result of a Prosecution Damages or Imprisonment I suppose,
and in failure of the first, what should I gain by inflicting the
second ? There are three children all under nine years old, too,
that must be reduced in either case to a state of wretchedness,
and perhaps absolute want of bread — besides all which, they
have already cost me too much money, and what's more
important, too much tranquility, to renew a subject so Shoking,
and I thank God, that all my friends without one exception, are
decidedly of opinion, that it is as unnecessary, as it would be
HUMILIATING, HARRASSING, and EXPENSIVE.— In that my
nerves have been so Shattered by former afflictions and the
agitations of the last four Months, that I really believe my
health would sink completely, were they to be continued ; I am
certain I can endure no more, without the most serious conse-
quences ; and I must take care of myself for the sake of a few
to whom my health is perhaps of more importance than it is to
myself.
" There is no species of suffering that I woud [not] prefer to
encountering the horrible indecency of that wretched woman,
whom every one supposes to be quite mad, too. . . . Show this
to your father and mother and now my dear Horace Speed you
well."
XVI
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER IN
MATURITY
THE idea of a double life — using the phrase with no
prejudicial construction — comes uppermost in one's
mind-picture of a distinguished player. To a more
obvious extent than in the case of any other actress known to
history, Mrs. Siddons was, on and off the stage, ' two different
people/ On the stage, she was a Pythoness, nightly hypnotised
into passionate emotions by the sight of the drop-curtain and
the boards. In her home, she was, at all events to the casual
observer, more than a thought too much a mere mother and
British matron, loving to be seemly and of good report, shut in
the tower of an unimaginative nature. Had she not been an
actress, she would have made (such an observer might have said)
an ideal Bishop's lady. Barchester would have been glad of
her.
Yet signs are not lacking that the temperament and pro-
fession of a player modified Mrs. Siddons's attitude towards the
concerns of actual existence. Her letters to Whalley, Mrs.
Pennington, and others leave little doubt that the ingrained
practice of impersonating tragic characters induced tragedy
ways of looking at the more serious incidents of her own life
and the lives around her, and — what was more insidious — set
up a habit of confounding important issues with sentimental,
exaggerated, 'pretend' issues. Especially in the relations
between herself, her elder daughter, and Lawrence, after the
death of Maria, there is evidence of the existence of both these
relaxing effects of her vocation upon her commerce with life.
Thanks to her inheritance of common sense, she suffered from
neither as acutely as the generality of players: but, all the
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 229
same, it would have been impossible for her totally to escape
that subtle disintegration of the sense of association which is,
and must be, produced by perpetually weeping without sorrow,
embracing without love, stabbing without anger, and dying
without dread. Her constant simulation of emotion did not
impair her faculty for genuine feeling. What it impaired — in
her case, to a relatively slight extent — was the discernment of
whether feeling was employed proportionately, or disproportion-
ately, to the exciting cause.
Artists, in whatever genre and of whatever grade, reap from
their calling one supreme benefit, i.e. a facility, while exercising
their art, to throw off the pressure of personal evils. Even their
children are secondary interests. " I love my wife," wrote
Stevenson, in a letter, " I do not know how much, nor can, nor
shall, unless I lost her, but though I could imagine myself
without my wife, I could not imagine myself without my art."
Johnson, it may be remembered, complained of Garrick that,
because 'the little Dog' was an actor, out of sight was, with
him, out of mind, and there was shrewd instinct in the
observation.
During the years now under contemplation, viz. from
about 1790 to 1812, Mrs. Siddons had, broadly speaking, left
behind her first period of melodrama, and was fulfilling her
second — by far the longer — period of Shakespearean heroic
characters, demanding largo of execution. The towering
criminality of Lady Macbeth, the primitive exultation of
Volumnia, the lofty indignation of Queen Katharine were the
full flowers of her art. People who saw her at forty-five, and
had not seen her eighteen years earlier, might, probably, think
her gifted to agitate and awe rather than to charm and win.
As beautiful, in girlhood, as Leighton's captive Andromache,
in maturity, as the Sacerdotessa Eumachia at Naples, Greece
or Rome seemed her native country, and she truly, was, as the
satin scroll presented to Kemble, on June 23, 1817, declared
her brother, ' every where contemporary with the august edifices
of the ancient world.'
And yet, so wide and certain was her sweep, she could still,
when she willed, suspend the lava flow of great passions, and
melt the heart with touches of the tender feminine sorrow,
230 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
conjugal or maternal, on which her fame had originally been
founded. Living persons have heard it said by them of old
time that no man who saw Mrs. Siddons in her meridian ever
pronounced her name without a tone and manner more softened
and raised than his habitual discourse, and Hazlitt thought —
what, indeed, can hardly be doubted — that the enthusiasm she
excited had something idolatrous about it. In Crabb Robin-
son's Diary, we find, under " 1828, February /th" : —
" I read one of the most worthless books of biography in
existence — Boaden's ( Life of Mrs. Siddons.' Yet it gave me
very great pleasure. Indeed, scarcely any of the finest
passages in ' Macbeth ' or ' Henry vm ' or ' Hamlet,' could
delight me so much as such a sentence as, 'This evening
Mrs. Siddons performed Lady Macbeth, or Queen Katharine,
or the Queen Mother/ for these names operated on me then
as they do now, in recalling the yet unfaded image of that most
marvellous woman, to think of whom is now a greater enjoy-
ment than to see any other actress."
The premier element in Mrs. Siddons's influence — never to
be overlooked, but difficult for any one of a later age to keep
fixedly before the mind's eye — was her extraordinary personal
loveliness.
Less justly to ' other women ' en bloc than to the queen of
the stage, Boaden remarks, " there was a male dignity in the
understanding of Mrs. Siddons that raised her above the helpless
timidity of other women." The self-command that enabled her
to read prayers by her dying daughter's bedside, 'with the
utmost clearness, accuracy, and fervor,' helped her to the
intrepidity she unfailingly displayed in stage accidents. One
evening, in 1809, when she was playing Lady Macbeth, at
* Brighthelmstone/ and Charles Kemble, as Macbeth, threw the
cup from him, in the banquet scene, with such violence that
it broke the heavy arm of a glass chandelier on the table, very
near her face, which, if struck, would have been seriously
injured, she sat as if made of marble. A more serious danger
menaced her when, playing Hermione, in 1802, she might have
been burnt, in the statue scene, but for the promptitude of
a scene-shifter, who, crawling towards her, extinguished the
flames curling round her muslin drapery. Him, by the way,
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 231
she not only rewarded with money, but by exerting her utmost
influence to obtain remission of the sentence of flogging passed
on his son, a military deserter. Peril by fire only threatened,
whereas the first time she acted Desdemona in London, she
actually contracted acute rheumatism from lying, in Act V.,
between damp sheets.
After the habit of her family, Mrs. Siddons, who, when
young, showed no tendency towards 'the embonpoint! grew
massive with the thickening years. Every child of man is
subject to ignominious accident, but it needed all Mrs. Siddons's
dignity to 'ease off' in 1808, a grievously ludicrous situation,
caused by a chair, set for her Queen Katharine, not proving
wide enough, so that, when she rose, it adhered closely to her.
A slighter disaster was created, on another occasion, by an
ignorant lad, who, being sent, on a sultry night, to fetch her
a pint of ale, brought it, foaming, on the stage, and presented
it to Lady Macbeth, in the sleep-walking scene. Mischances
of this sort were apter to occur at a time when stage subordinates
— the plebs of the theatre, as Fanny Kemble termed them —
were more uncivilised than nowadays.
At a date when the Mob had not yet grown into the People,
every actress had, at times, to nerve herself to face the music,
not only of cat-calls, but of actual battles at the footlights.
Thoughts of pugilism were never far off; Lamb has told us
there could scarcely be promise of a stage fight without the pit,
'as their manner is/ seeming disposed to make a ring. If
anything in the history of theatres little repays attention,
except from the antiquarian specialist, it is theatrical rioting,
the bursting out of bonds of the lawless, and, frequently,
irrelevant feelings of the more demonstrative parts of the
house. Nevertheless, a sketch of Mrs. Siddons's circumstances
in her golden days would be incomplete if it included no notice
of the notorious ' O.P. row ' of 1809.
The first stone of Smirke's new Covent Garden was laid, by
the Prince of Wales, on December 3Oth, 1808 — an uncompro-
misingly wet day that soaked silk-stockinged, bare-headed
Kemble to the skin, sowed seeds of lasting illness in Thomas
Harris, and uncurled Mrs. Siddons's plume of black feathers.
During the ensuing spring and summer, ' like some tall
232 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
palm ' the stately ' fabric sprung/ and Boaden rivals Alfred
Jingle in his ecstatic mention of 'the amazing structure — the
vast patronage — the private boxes — the now unquestionable
increase of prices/ The last item begs the question of the
O.P. disturbances.
The enormous expense of the new erection, viz. £1 50,000 l
(only in part justified by the dearness of building materials
at the time), led the proprietors to increase the prices of
admission — to the open boxes, from 6s. to 7s., to the pit,
from 33. 6d. to 43. They turned the whole third tier into
twenty-eight private, or 'annual' boxes, each at a rental
of £300, and, to entice noble patrons from the Opera, they
engaged the flute-voiced Roman, Catalani, to sing two nights
weekly. The new gallery, meanwhile, had solid divisions
obstructive to sight, and so steep a rake that its occupants
could see only the legs of performers far back on the stage.
These innovations, combined, were the grievances that brought
about the O.P. (Old Prices) Riots. It is possible to peruse
hundreds of pages that consecutively describe this curious
strife. The fullest account is given in a pamphlet skit, entitled
The Rebellion, or All in the Wrong \ the next fullest, in an
anonymous ' Life ' of Kemble, ' interspersed with [scurrilous]
Family and Theatrical Anecdotes/ published during the
progress of the riots, with a ludicrous frontispiece by one of
the Cruikshanks.
The new Covent Garden opened on Monday, September
1 8th, with Macbeth and The Quaker. The house was
crammed, "but," says Lawrence, in a letter to Farington,
"presented a formidable appearance for the Women being
so thinly sprinkled."2 The instant Kemble appeared, as
Macbeth, he was greeted with hisses, hoots, and groans, and,
1 " A vast expense was incurred in building and furnishing the new theatre, amount-
ing to £300,000, and upwards, and at the time of opening, in 1809, there was a debt
due from the proprietors on account of the former theatre amounting to ^"30,000.
To meet this sum of .£330,000, the joint funds in hand were ,£45,000 recovered for
insurance, and ,£76,000, or thereabouts, raised by granting annuities, and free
admissions into the theatre to certain persons called ' new subscribers.' " — The Annals
of Covent Garden Theatre, by Henry Saxe Wyndham, i. 338, 1906. (Quoted by
permission of Messrs. Chatto & Windus.)
2 Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag, 63.
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 233
thenceforward, no sentence of the play travelled across the
din, except (according to Stockdale's Covent Garden Journat)
occasional isolated syllables in Mrs. Siddons's sonorous tones.
This was the initiation of a warfare, imaginatively variegated
in its methods, which lasted sixty-six nights. During its
continuance, Macready's father sent his son to London, with
the superfluous injunction to hear every other good actor, but
not the too easily imitable Kemble. Kemble continued to
act, although inaudibly, but the grand voice and presence
of his sister were withdrawn, after the disastrous opening,
and did not reappear till April 24th, 1810.
The O.P. fever was catching, and spread from 'a lawless,
hir'd, determin'd, and persevering Minority' (the words used
by Lawrence, who, in letters to Farington,1 gives an interesting
account of the riots) to three parts of the theatre-frequenting
public. The Times animadverted on the extravagance of
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons's Macbeth costumes, which, together,
were stated to have cost ;£soo,2 and said, commenting
on Mrs. Siddons's salary, that the Lord Chief Justice sat
every day in Westminster Hall, from nine to four, for half
that sum.
There was genuine fun, and no spirit of atrocity, in the
riots, and, inside the theatre, the * O.P.s,' disciplined with
pains by their leaders, took every precaution to keep within
law-abiding limits. The old servility of English actors, at
which, in 1782, Pastor C. P. Moritz, a naif outsider, marvelled,
was, probably, for the most part, a conventional attitude, but
whether so or not, Kemble largely helped to put an end to
the cringing forbearance of manner with which even great
Garrick had met unruly audiences. ' Don John ' went too
far the other way, and his high-handedness in asking the
malcontents, after three nights' rioting, 'what they wanted/
exasperated them as much as the introduction into all parts
of the house of anti-O.P. ' gemmen of the fist, with their
Belcher neckerchiefs,' who worked out their admissions by
means of sticks and fists.
1 Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag, 62-68.
2 This must be an exaggeration. In Vol. 1793-97 of Winston's Drury Lane
Memoranda, a loose sheet of D.L. accounts includes 'dress for Siddons, I2l. I2s.'
234 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
On December 2nd, 1809, Mrs. Siddons wrote to Mrs.
Fitzhugh that, for weeks together, Mrs. John Kemble had
lived with ladders at the windows, in order to make her escape
through the garden, in case of an attack. Mrs. Kemble's
nervous precaution was not altogether unjustified, for, on
November 4th, the c O.P.s,' hundreds strong, had marched,
late at night, to Great Russell Street, where, on Kemble's
non-appearance at their summoning war-whoop, they broke
some of his windows with pence, and disfigured the front of
the house with mud. A propos> this 'Impromptu' appeared
in one of the dailies : —
"When KEMBLE'S Ads the public censure gains,
They neither spare his aitches nor his panes \ "
A compromise, favourable to O.P. claims, was arrived at on
I4th-i5th December. The O.P. final placard bore the words,
" We are satisfied." Mrs. Siddons, in her letter of the 2nd inst.
to Mrs. Fitzhugh, thus characteristically summed up recent
events at Covent Garden : —
"... What a time it has been with us all, beginning with
fire, and continued with fury ! Yet sweet sometimes are the
uses of adversity. They not only strengthen family affection,
but teach us all to walk humbly with our God."
One finds it stated that Mrs. Siddons lost £50 a night
during her enforced withdrawal in the O.P. season. This does
not accord with the following details, given to Campbell by
Henry Robertson, the Covent Garden treasurer, as to her
salary : —
1804-5. -£2° Per night
1805-6. £27 per night
1806-7. 30 guineas per night
iSio-ii. 30 guineas per night
1811-12. 50 guineas per night.
The theatrical season covered about nine months, during
which Mrs. Siddons acted, on an average, about fifty times.
Boaden speaks of 1785 as a year in which she made unusual
exertion — acting seventy-one times. On the average of fifty
times, she was earning, from her London engagement, from
1806 to 1811, £1575 a year. In addition, she stood to gain,
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 235
each season, not less than £1200 to £1600, out of her two
benefits. Nor was this all. As a rule, and when her health
was normal, she utilised the months unemployed by London
in ' skirring the country round/ taking the bread, it was bitterly
alleged, out of poor people's mouths, i.e. the provincial stock
actors'. " I hope to put about iooo/. into my pocket this
summer," she writes from Liverpool, in July, 1807. Of
subscriptions and * purses,' over and above the straightforward
price of tickets, we read less as her greatness and affluence
become established facts. It should be borne in mind that
there were, throughout her career, occasional whole seasons,
and parts of seasons, when she did not appear on the London
stage at all.
At the beginning of last century, the receipts of a famous
actress bore a much more favourable proportion to those of a
great singer than to-day. To-day, a serious actress, in the
first rank, may aspire to £150 a week, a favourite singing
actress (musical comedy) to £"200 a week, and clothes. A
great cantatrice safely expects £300 a night in grand opera.
During Mrs. Siddons's most remunerative season, she received
(assuming Robertson's statement, and Campbell's report, to be
accurate) £52, los. a night, i.e. £3302 for her season of sixty-
three nights.1 Mrs. Billington, the Melba of those days, received
^"4000 for the season, ending, for her, on April 1st ; and, for
the season ravaged by the O.P. rioters, Catalani had been
promised £75 a night. While, for the actress's chastening, the
prima donna is unmistakably preferred to her, she enjoys the
correspondingly solid advantage that the stage is one of the
very few professions in which women and men work on an
economic equality. It must also be remembered that the
opera season is very much shorter than the theatre season.
Mrs. Siddons showed herself markedly 'like folks' in her
ever-renewed postponement of the date at which she could
' afford ' to retire. The ' castle' she built in 1783 was a country
cottage and ^10,000. In 1785, she wrote to the Whalleys :
" I have three winters' servitude, and then, with the blessing
of God, I hope to sit down tolerably easy, for you know I am
not ambitious in my desires." About a year afterwards, she
1 Appendix B.
236 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
wrote to Whalley : " I have at last . . . attained the ten thousand
pounds which I set my heart upon." There is no mention of
retirement, and the cottage is allowed to "melt into air,"
though she describes herself as "now perfectly at ease with
respect to fortune." In July, 1801, out of health, and in the
rush of a starring tour, she wrote, from Preston, to Mrs.
Fitzhugh : " I must go on making, to secure the few comforts
that I may have been able to attain for myself and my
family." Exactly six years later, she wrote, from Liverpool
"If I can but add three hundred a year to my present
income, I shall be perfectly well provided for; and I am
resolved when that is accomplished, to make no more positive
engagements in summer." To James Ballantyne, writing from
Leeds, also in July, 1807, sne explained her position in greater
detail :—
". . . I am trying to secure to myself the comfort of a
carriage, which is an absolute necessary to me,1 and then — then
will I sit down in quiet to the end of my days. You will
perhaps be surpris'd to hear that I am not abundantly rich,
but you know not the expences I have incurred in times past
& the losses I have sustain'd; add, too, the necessity which
Mr. Siddons' ill-health induces of his living at Bath for the
benefit of those waters. All these causes drain one's purse
beyond imagination."
For seven years longer, Mrs. Siddons went on work-
ing. When she died, she left under £50,000. Clearly, the
expenses of the oft-cited five children and a husband had
been heavy. In 1799, her daughter, Sally, wrote to Sally Bird :
" I have always been told that I was to expect but little in
the case of such an event {i.e. marriage], and this, I believe,
was pretty well known."
The nullity of Mr. Siddons in the world's estimation was,
to some extent, indemnified at home by his role of finance
minister. Mrs. Siddons was given a quarterly allowance, she
told Whalley, when he begged from her £So to help to relieve
the distresses of Mrs. Pennington, and urged, as an incentive
to generosity, that to Mrs. Pennington poor Maria had owed
the soothing comforts of her last days. Such a reference to
1 Hitherto, we must suppose, she had 'jobbed.'
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 237
what she called c a wound ... of itself too apt to bleed ' naturally
hurt Mrs. Siddons. "Indeed, indeed, my dear sir, there was
no occasion to recal those sad and tender scenes to soften
my nature; but let it pass." It should be added that she
cordially engaged that Mr. Siddons should at once disburse
the £80.
Apparently, she suffered even more anxiety than was
necessary over her husband's unsatisfactory connection with
Sadler's Wells Theatre. The idea of Sadler's Wells strikes
a discord with the name of Siddons. With quaint forcibleness,
Princess Augusta, in 1797, expressed to Mme D'Arblay her
sense of the incongruity — for she, in addition, had jumped to
the conclusion that it was the great tragic mistress, not * Sid,'
who had bought into the proprietorship — " Mrs. Siddons and
Sadler's Wells," said she, "seems to me as ill fitted as the
dish they call a toad in a hole ; which I never saw, but
always think of with anger — putting a noble sirloin of beef
into a poor, paltry batter-pudding ! " In 1802, Siddons's quarter
of Sadler's Wells Theatre was purchased for £1400 by Thomas
and Charles Dibdin, conjointly.
The most domestic of public women lived her active London
life of excitement and toil, for the most part, in three houses,
14 Gower Street, 49 Great Marlborough Street, and Westbourne
Farm. She did not move into 27 Upper Baker Street, the
house in which she died, till 1817. At that date, she began,
like many another parent of a tonish miss, to find that a
far-away address was disadvantageous for the daughter's social
opportunities. To Mrs. Piozzi, the new house itself seemed
remote. She wrote to Sir James Fellowes, soon after Mrs.
Siddons moved in, "... Adieu ! I must dress to dine what
I call out of town — the top house in Baker Street."
In imagining what we may be sure was the respectable maho-
gany comfort — with a man-servant kept — of Mrs. Siddons's first
fixed home in London, we may take into account that the Gower
Street of her years, 1784-90, was a less grim-looking locality
than the Gower Street of to-day. Colonel Sutherland, at No. 33,
sat under his own vine; Lord Eldon, at No. 42, could pull
a peach off his house wall ; Mr. William Bentham, at No. 6
(Upper Gower Street), used to regale friends on Gower-Street-
238 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
grown nectarines. As late as 1812, a short lane led into an
archery ground, whence a pedestrian might walk uninterruptedly
through fields to Hampstead and Highgate. The coloured
' Embellishments ' in Ackermann's Repository help us to
reconstruct the relatively little London of that less Imperial
age.
Mrs. Siddons dwelt at 49 Great Marlborough Street from
1790 till the fall of 1804, when, Mr. Siddons's chronic rheumatism
rendering Bath his only tolerable residence, she gave up the
house, and, with Patty Wilkinson, went into lodgings in Prince's
Street, Hanover Square. Mr. and Mrs. Siddons had spent
some weeks of summer, 1804, at Hampstead, as, during 1795
and 1796, they had, with their family, rented a 'little nutshell
upon Putney Heath/1 The summer of 1790 had found the
casa Siddons established, for about seven weeks, in ' little neat
lodgings,' at Sandgate. Mrs. Siddons loved, as she said, ' fresh
air and green fields/ and a proceeding that gave her long-
lasting satisfaction was her removal, in April, 1805, from
London proper to Westbourne Farm, or, as she, sometimes,
alternatively wrote it, Westbourne House, Paddington.
Pulled down about fifty years ago, the cottage known as
Westbourne Farm stood on Westbourne Green, a rural open
space off the Harrow Road, close to the Lock Bridge. Allow-
ing for the greater picturesqueness of a century ago, Paddington,
* Westbournia/ and Bayswater wore then something of the aspect
places like Isleworth and Heston wear now. Nurserymen's
grounds flourished — as the numerous old pear and mulberry
trees still existing, in those districts, in back-garden and
'Square/ testify — so did alehouses, exact Morland pictures,
screened by elms, flanked by long stone watering troughs,
each with its sign creaking overhead. So, too, flourished, in
its season, haymaking, as Mary Berry's 'Journal/ date June
26th, 1809, calls to mind. Not very far from Westbourne
Farm stood the almost new — Henry Angelo says the cockney-
looking — Church of St. Mary's, Paddington,2 and the adjacent
1 Boyle's Court Guide for 1796 adds to * 49 Great Marlborough Street' 'Putney
Heath, Surrey ' as Mrs. Siddons's country address.
2 The earlier, Charles n church (in which Hogarth was married), was demolished
in 1791, and the new church erected a hundred feet south of it.
MRS. SIDDONS
BY HARLOW
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 239
Green, with which, in clay and marble, Sarah Siddons was
destined to become mortally associated.
Westbourne Farm was a bijou villa, large enough for its
tenant, her one surviving daughter, Cecilia, and Patty Wilkinson,
and in its progressive beautification, building a studio, and
laying out a garden (with the indispensable shrubbery of
1805), Mrs. Siddons took a great deal of wholesome interest.
To Ballantyne, a couple of years after her installation, she
wrote, concerning ' that dear hut her home ' : —
"You wou'd scarcely know that sweet little spot, it is so
improved since you saw it. I believe tho' I wrote you
about my dining-room and the pretty bedchamber at the
end of it, where you are to sleep, unannoyd by your former
neighbours in their mangers — stalls, I shou'd say, I believe.
All the laurells are green and flourishing; all the wooden
garden pales hidden by sweet shrubs & flowers that form
a verdant wall all round me. Oh, it is the prettiest little
nook in all the world."
Mr. Siddons's turn for opuscular poetry probably never
found a more felicitous vent than when he penned the follow-
ing verses, which, moreover, show him in unmistakably
harmonious relations with a wife whose perpetual housemate,
owing to adventitious circumstances, he was no longer —
ON MRS. SIDDONS'S COTTAGE AT WESTBOURNE.
i
Would you I'd Westbourne Farm describe,
I'll do it then, and free from gall,
For sure it would be sin to gibe
A thing so pretty and so small.
2
The poplar walk, if you have strength,
Will take a minute's time to step it;
Nay, certes, 'tis of such a length,
'T would almost tire a frog to leap it.
3
But when the pleasure-ground is seen,
Then what a burst comes on the view ;
Its level walk, its shaven green,
For which a razor's stroke would do.
240 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
4
Now, pray be cautious when you enter,
And curb your strides from much expansion ;
Three paces take you to the centre,
Three more, you're close against the mansion.
5
The mansion, cottage, house, or hut,
Call't what you will, has room within
To lodge the king of Lilliput,
But not his court, nor yet his queen.
6
The kitchen-garden, true to keeping,
Has length and breadth and width so plenty,
A snail, if fairly set a-creeping,
Could scarce go round while you told twenty.
7
Perhaps you'll cry, on hearing this,
What ! every thing so very small ?
No, she that made it what it is,
Has greatness that makes up for all."
With a practicable garden, Mrs. Siddons could give summer
evening parties in a house so tiny that when the big and
burly Prince Regent came to call, it looked [says Mrs. Mair]
as if built round those two. For June ist, i8ir, Miss Berry
has, in her ' Journal ' : —
" In the evening to Mrs. Siddons's at Westbourne Farm.
Went before ten o'clock. The whole house was illuminated,
on the outside with coloured lamps, and in the inside with
candles, and every bush in the garden with lamps. In short,
it was the prettiest little Vauxhall that could be, and a vast
many people there."
In spite of Mrs. Siddons's having, for a time, the Charles
Kembles for next-door neighbours, on Westbourne Green,
Westbourne Farm, from its retired situation, had drawbacks,
especially on winter evenings. Thus, in an unpublished letter,
of December, 1814, to one of her nieces, Mrs. Siddons wrote: —
" Westbourne ... at this time of Year and in these parlous
times is rather a melancholy residence. Even dear Horace
[Twiss] is afraid of coming to us, and indeed one hears of
so many robberies &c. that I should have more pain and
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 241
anxiety from his visits than the great pleasure of his society
would compensate."
From Westbourne Farm to Covent Garden was a longish
drive, and, during her farewell season (1812) at all events,
Mrs. Siddons took lodgings for the winter in Pall Mall, where,
when Campbell called, 'the long line' of the carriages of her
other visitors ' that filled the street ' at first led him to conclude
there must be ' a levee at St. James's.'
We have just seen that Mrs. Siddons added a studio to
Westbourne Farm. Campbell relates that, one day, in 1789,
when she happened to be shopping, in Birmingham, an
unconscious salesman sold her a plaster bust of 'the greatest
and most beautiful actress that was ever seen in the world.'
The provocation of this unrecognisable travesty of herself
was (according to her biographer attitrt) the germ of her
favourite leisure occupation. She started modelling by trying
to make a better likeness of herself than the ' image ' she had
bought. In later years, she must have enjoyed exchanging
this story with the kindred anecdote concerning the Italian
image seller which her friend, Anne Seymour Darner, had to
tell of her own impulsion into statuary.
It would be absurd to expect that Mrs. Siddons's 'sculp-
ing' should have had great merit. Excellence is not for
those who take up an art as a pastime. I do not know
whether anything from her hand survives,1 nor even whether
she attempted marble. Public Characters states that she
" produced, among other things, a medallion of herself,2 a
bust of her brother, John, Kemble, in the chararacter of
Coriolanus, and a study of Brutus before the death of Caesar."
It was no disgrace to the greatest of English actresses that
she did not get so far in that other harmony of sculpture as
Mrs. Darner. What is psychologically interesting is her
attraction towards, and capacity for, 'the round.' To judge
from her and Sarah II, it would seem that the nerve centres
that control the two plastic arts, acting and sculpture, must
lie near together.
1 A bust of herself in the Garrick Club ' is said to be ' her work.
2 An engraving, by Ridley, from this medallion, is in the Burney Collection
(vm. 62), British Museum.
16
242 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Apart from art, our practical, rarely idle lady was handy
with her hands. In the early days, she fashioned her children's
clothes; in 1803, we find her making Mrs. John Kemble 'a
Black Net for her Head';1 in 1813, sewing a ' silken quilt,'
for Campbell.2
She by no means missed life's average portion of physical
evils. Mrs. Piozzi, indeed, wrote, though certainly with
exaggeration, on February I5th, 1795, to the Rev. Daniel
Lysons : " Poor dear Mrs. Siddons is never well long
together, always some torment, body or mind, or both." Her
first recorded illness was in the winter, or early spring, of
1784, her second, in 1786-87, when, for ten months, she was
visited with 'a miserable nervous disorder,' the forerunner,
in all probability, of her later rheumatism and the 'terrible
headaches' that afflicted her in advanced years. In 1791,
she again had a long spell of illness, cured by Harrogate.
One of the worst maladies of her life overtook her, when she
was forty-nine, in the form of torturing sciatica (what would
now be called a neuritis) 'from the hip to the toe.' 'Sid,'
for his rheumatism, and she, for hers, determined — as has been
seen — to try Hampstead, and Campbell records that, at their first
meal there — in Capo di Monte Cottage, at the end of Upper
Terrace — * the old gentleman,' looking at the fine prospect through
their windows, exclaimed, ' Sally, this will cure all our ailments!'"
But Mrs. Siddons only grew worse, till, contrary to the opinion
of all her doctors, except Sir James Earle (whose assent was
negative — it would do her no harm), she decided on electric
treatment. This being applied, she was ' almost instantly cured,'
but her shrieks when 'the sparks touched' — which, she said,
created a feeling ' as if burning lead was running through her
veins/ were enough — so her husband averred — to make passers-
by burst into the house to see who was being murdered.
Tuberculosis killed one of Mrs. Siddons's sons, and one of her
daughters, but she herself seems to have been free from any
taint of it. The first mention of the disease which, in the end,
proved fatal to her, occurs in May, 1801, when she writes, from
Manchester, to Mrs. Fitzhugh, " My face has been very much
1 See a letter in the Forster Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum.
2 Campbell, ii. 348.
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 243
enflam'd, but is getting well by the aid of a Doctor Ferrier in
this place." x Considerably later in the same year, Mrs. Piozzi
told Whalley, "Our poor Siddons complains sadly of her
mouth — a strumous2 swelling in the lip, if I understand Mrs.
Pennington perfectly."
"What good does complaining do?" wrote Mrs. Siddons.
She had no tendency to make the most of illness. " The natural
disposition to be well will shortly restore me," she said to the
Whalleys, when she was fifty-four. This wholesome conviction,
triumphing even over the untimely deaths of Maria and Sally,
alone shows her elasticity of nerve. On the other hand, she
was feelirigly able to write to Lady Harcourt, upon the death of
Queen Charlotte, " I know by sad experience how wonderfully
the mind sustains the body while exertions are necessary, and
the sad nervous languid state in which they leave one when they
cease to be so." It should be added that Mrs. Siddons was
never once accused of 'artistic' irritability. Through the
contrarinesses of rehearsals, she was always — no small matter
— even-tempered. Charles Young looked back to the periods
during which he had ' the good forture to act with her, as the
happiest of his professional recollections.'
Like the rest of her kin, Mrs. Siddons ate well. For this
statement we are able to quote no less an authority than her
butcher (who, also, to his loss, was Haydon's), a man named
Sowerby, who descanted to Haydon with an expert's gusto on
Mrs. Siddons's partiality for mutton chops —
"... never was such a woman for chops I ... I have fed
John Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Madame
Catalani, Morland the painter, and you, sir. Madame Catalani
was a wonderful woman for sweetbreads; but the Kemble
family — the gentlemen, sir — rump-steaks and kidneys in
general was their taste; but Mrs. Siddons, sir, she liked
chops."
Further evidence of the solidity of Mrs. Siddons's favourite
vivers is supplied by two stories Scott loved to tell. In one, he
imitated the tragedy contralto in which she replied, to the
Provost of Edinburgh, when he asked her if the beef was not
1 Alfred Morrison Collection. Catalogue, vi. 130.
2 This was a mistake. It was not scrofulitic.
244 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
too salt, " Beef cannot be too salt for me, my lord." Scott's
other story was to mimic the blank verse line with which she
pulverised a young footman at the Ashestiel dinner-table —
"You've brought me water, boy, — I asked for beer."
It was Tom Moore who said he heard her observe, ' in her
most tragic tone/ at a supper-table at Lady Mount-Edge-
cumbe's, " I do love ale dearly." With these ana may be
placed a memory communicated to me by Miss C. Agnes
Rooper, whose father, on a visit, as a boy, to his aunt, Lady
Sunderlin, wife of the Attorney-General for Ireland, met Mrs.
Siddons at breakfast, and remembered, for the rest of his
life, her concentration of interest in a not at first get-at-able
mustard-pot.
The quite credible statement made by a contemporary letter-
writer that Mrs. Siddons, when a young mother, might be seen,
like Mr. Hewlett's Madonna of the Peach-Tree in the tavern,
feeding (allaitanf) her infant in the greenroom, ought only to
remind us that there is a date-mark in manners as surely as a
geography in morals. The modern student is, perhaps, slightly
surprised at finding the decorous, the correct Mrs. Siddons saying,
" Good God ! " and, more frequently, " Bless me ! " on minor
occasions. Her " I wish to God I had seen the Marquis " x
would sound even worse, did we not bear in mind the pre-
valence, during her period, of a careless use of sacred words, in
1 the best company,' when Miss Seward wrote, in letters, " Good
God ! " and even Miss Berry swore, while the second lady in
the kingdom used to say " d n me ! " and, at almost every
sentence, " I tell you God's truth." The coarse vixen, Caroline,
is, it must be confessed, an extreme instance. Even between
the youth and old age of Mrs. Siddons (thanks, in a measure, to
the influence of the ' Blues ') considerable changes came over the
external refinement of conversation.
An actress's highest triumph would be, not that the audience
should exclaim, " Look at Ellen Terry ! " " Here comes Duse ! "
but " Ah ! this is Portia \ " " This is Marguerite Gauthier ! " Just
that triumph the great Siddons achieved. But she went beyond
it, she fell on the other, for, so habituated had she become to
1 Mrs. Siddons to Whalley. Whalley, i. 436.
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 245
thinking with the mind she divined in Queen Katharine,
Constance, and Volumnia, to such an extent had she identified
her personality with sublime parts, that, in shop, and street, and
evening party, still, she talked in iambics, and still, people were
disposed to say, " Here comes Queen Katharine ! " She could
not, in manner, get clear of her characters ; she preserved the
style of her subjects, and her style — so much the more actress
she — was herself.
Therefore it was that she reminded Washington Irving of
Scott's knights, who 'carved the meat through their gloves of steel ' ;
that she stabbed the potatoes, as Sydney Smith vividly put it ;
that she said, " Give me the bowl ! " meaning the salad bowl, in
a tone, and with an emphasis on the pronoun which made every-
body laugh; that she terrified the Bath draper with "Will it
wash?" — one of the best-known sayings of modern times.
When Campbell chaffed her as to the clinging, unconscious
tragedy habit, evinced in this last, she, giving a further proof of
it, replied, " Witness truth, I did not wish to be tragical ! "
King Cambyses' vein was so much her second nature that a
Quarterly Reviewer, for August, 1834, commenting on "Will it
wash ? " says that every one who ever saw Mrs. Siddons in
private could parallel it by some similar anecdote. Her own
yea being yea, and her nay, nay, she was wont to take equally
literally what she was told. This is evidenced in the story of
her comment, on being informed Mr. Somebody was found dead
in his bureau, " Poor man ! How gat he there ? " We may
take our choice between her unblinking vision of the luckless
person curled under the slope of the desk and her no less
egregious aspect, in a variant on the story, presented to my
attention by her great-granddaughter, Miss Mair, which affirms
that to the statement, " There were pigs [Scotice for cans for
chimney-pots for increasing the draught] on the roof," Mrs.
Siddons, on a visit to Edinburgh, calmly returned, " How gat
they there?"
In every artist's nature there is a magnetic element. This,
Mrs. Siddons left at home when she stalked into general society.
She lacked, off the stage, the player's mobility, and that gift of
charming universally, which, as a rule, actresses both enjoy by
nature, and diligently cultivate. She possessed no semblance
246 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
of ' ce petit rys follastre* (Englished by Locker-Lampson into
' that little, giddy laugh ') which Marot assigned to Madame
D'Allebret. She had nothing of Garrick's adaptability. She
was marmoreal where he was supple. That she was ' difficult '
with strangers there can be no question. The something rigid
in her personality, what Campbell calls ' that air of uncom-
promising principle in her physiognomy, which struck you at
first sight, and was verified by the longest acquaintance,' joining
with her composed and careful utterance, the habit she learnt
at her mother's knee, conspired to produce a deterrent effect
on slight acquaintances. Even a caerulean like Anna Seward,
all high-flown ecstasies, confessed that, in conversation with
Mrs. Siddons, she ' never felt herself so much awed in her life.
The most awkward embarrassment was the consequence.'
Miss Berry, who had, the previous year, discovered * how much '
Mrs. Siddons gained c by being known,' noted, in a letter
written, in 1799, from North Audley Street, that Mrs. Siddons
" was one of a little party we had last night. . . . She was at
her very best ; had put off the Catherine, or rather not put it on
since her return from Bath, and sang to us after supper, and
was agreeable." Fanny Burney's records of her chance inter-
views with Mrs. Siddons are well known. The diarist was not
naturally simpatica. After their meeting, in 1782, at Miss
Monckton's, she entered, " She has a steadiness in her manner
and deportment by no means engaging." In 1787, when she
was commanded to receive the royal Reading Preceptress at
Windsor, she notes —
" I found her the heroine of a tragedy — sublime, elevated,
and solemn; in voice, deep and dragging; and in conversation,
formal, sententious, calm, and dry. I expected her to have been
all that is interesting, the delicacy and sweetness with which
she seizes every opportunity to strike and to captivate upon
the stage had persuaded me [etc., etc.] . . . but I was very
much mistaken."1
It was on this latter occasion that Mrs. Siddons, in the
midst of being ' formal, sententious, calm, and dry,' staggered
Miss Fanny by impulsively saying that her Cecilia was the one
part she really longed to impersonate.
1 See, also, D'Arblay, iv. 301.
HER ART, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHARACTER 247
Mrs. Siddons had no small talk, and, from absorption in
what she rightly designated her ' own pressing avocations/ and
the quiet confidence her unparalleled self-made position could not
fail to give her, she never took the pains lesser speechless folk
take to amend this deficiency. In all probability, she would
as much have scorned to lay herself out, in private, to propitiate
chance strangers as, by any cheap trick, on the stage, to catch
(as Foote has it in his Treatise on the Passions) ( an ignorant
Bene from the hard Hands of the Gallery.' When moved
thereto, she would, occasionally, go out of her way to snub the
c mostly fools,' as, when, a lady, remarking in her hearing, while
gazing at the mountains at Penmaenmawr, " This awful scenery
makes me feel as if I were only a worm, or a grain of dust, on
the face of the earth," she turned round, more awful than the
prospect, and said, " I feel very differently." Mrs. Piozzi blamed
her for ' never voluntarily holding converse with coarse or
common people.' On her incapacity for laying aside her chopine,
Campbell makes the following indulgent, probably just,
remark : —
"This singularity made her manner susceptible of caricature.
I know not what others felt, but I own that I loved her all the
better for this unconscious solemnity of manner ; for, independ-
ently of its being blended with habitual kindness to her friends,
and giving, odd as it may seem, a zest to the humour of her
familiar conversation, it always struck me as a token of her
simplicity. In point of fact, a manner in itself artificial, sprung
out of the naivete of her character."
Lawrence's testimony is the same. Writing, on November
22nd, 1829, to John Julius Angerstein, as to the success of
Fanny Kemble, he adds : —
" Her manner in private is characterised by ease, and that
modest gravity which I believe must belong to high tragic
genius, and which, in Mrs. Siddons, was strictly natural to her
though, from being peculiar in the general gaiety of society, it
was often thought assumed."
Stothard, who, without much intimacy, seems, instincdvely,
to have understood her, was even more emphatic as to her
naturalness than either Campbell or Lawrence. "... it would
have been," he said, " as out of character in her to have formed
248 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
her manners by those of the ordinary rate of persons, as it
would be in a very tall woman to walk stooping."
Frosty towards outsiders, but, as we have repeatedly seen,
sweet as summer to people she valued, and knew well, Mrs.
Siddons showed at her best in her home, and, there, was so far
from arrogance that once — the trait is communicated by
Campbell — she sent for a servant she had undeservedly rebuked,
and, before her family, begged his pardon.
Far enough from being a witty, or a frolicsome, lady, she,
like the rest of us, appreciated what to her appeared ' comical.'
When, with Patty Wilkinson, she visited Shakespeare's birth-
house, where a loquacious ' shew- woman ' tried to ' palm upon
their credulity a little monster, with a double tongue, as a
descendant of Shakespeare, she remarked that nature had en-
dowed the ' shew-woman ' herself ' with a double allowance of
tongue.' Another instance of Mrs. Siddons's playfulness takes
the form of an unpublished letter to her nephew, which runs, in
her resolute, legible handwriting : —
" MY DEAR HORACE, — Your Manuscript is very graciously
Accepted.— Yours aff^ S. SlDDONS
"EDiN. March -2.1th"
Mrs. Siddons could afford to confess herself ' a matter-of-
fact woman,' made of f inability and simpleness ' ; but it was
harsh of the precocious girl who twas, without doubt, retro-
spectively jealous of her aunt, to write that she " was what we
call a great dramatic genius, and off the stage gave not the
slightest indication of unusual intellectual capacity of any sort."
The expressive, perspicuous letters Mrs. Siddons wrote, her
amateur's practice of sculpture, and her friendships with women
like Mrs. Darner and Mrs. Opie, and with such men as Scott
and Windham alone go far to disprove Fanny Kemble's
summary judgment. Probably, no woman ever possessed a
more clear-cut, collected, and competent mind than Mrs.
Siddons — in spite of a canard which, she told Mrs. Piozzi, in
1796, was going about that she was under confinement for
insanity! Whether she possessed all the qualities her friend,
Burke, styled c the soft green of the soul ' is less certain.
XVII
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES
MRS. SIDDONS'S years, covering most of the second
half of the eighteenth century, and outlasting the first
quarter of the nineteenth, were practically coeval with
the reign of George III and the regency and reign of George IV.
Among the vagaries that preluded George Ill's second attack
of insanity (1788) was his giving Mrs. Siddons a blank paper,
with his signature at the foot. This carte blanche Mrs. Siddons,
showing her instinctive good sense in emergencies, at once
handed to Queen Charlotte. By 1788, she was habituated to
the thrilling vibrations of 'Your Majesty' and 'Your Royal
Highness.' Baby Princess Amelia, who, in 1783, extended her
hand when the great actress ecstatically breathed a wish to kiss
her, had helped to teach her Court etiquette.
Both King and Queen, we have seen, showed themselves
her steady patrons. They disliked tragedy, but saw her, during
January, 1783, in five roles. The King looked through his
monocular opera glass till he could not see for tears, and
gracious, punctilio-exacting, little Charlotte (who, in later years,
reminded Lawrence of an old grey parrot) avowed that, in order
not to weep, she sometimes found it necessary to turn her back
to the stage, for, * inteed,' Mrs. Siddons's acting was ' doo
desagreble.' 1 In 1785, Fanny Burney (before her incarceration)
was staying with Mrs. Delany, and heard Royal George, when
he called, talk of Mrs. Siddons, * with the warmest praise.' " I
am an enthusiast for her," he cried, "quite an enthusiast.
I think there was never any player in my time so excellent — not
Garrick himself; I own it!" In this same year, shortly before
1 So, in the original MS. only of his biography of Mrs. Siddons, Campbell
reproduced the Queen's pronunciation.
249
250 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
the birth of George Siddons, to whom the Heir to the Throne
stood godfather, Mrs. Siddons wrote to Whalley: "... the
other day her Majesty very graciously sent me a box of
powders, which she thought might be of use to me, and which
she said I need not be afraid of, as she always took them herself
when in my situation. These very superior honours, as you
may suppose, create me many enemies."
At Weymouth, where the King and Queen went * a-wam-
bling about like the most everyday old man and woman,' and
used to walk to the theatre from Gloucester House, Mrs.
Siddons acted before them. It was their holiday season, and,
preferring to do herself injustice in comedy than that they
should be bored by tragedies, she played Rosalind, Lady
Townly, and Colman's Mrs. Oakley.
Mrs. Siddons frankly admired the ' deplorable Regent,' who,
it must be said, was uniformly attentive and affable to her, and,
thereby, added a fourth to his three claims upon respect in that
he made much of Scott, admired Jane Austen, and naturalised
French cookery. Mrs. Siddons was never at Brighton without
being a guest at the Pavilion — that symbol of late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century ' smartness ' out of town. In 1798,
writing from Brighton, she told a correspondent she did
not like the prospect of meeting Lady Jersey at supper, but,
realising that a refusal would displease the individual whom
Lawrence's friend, Farington, seeking favours, wrote of with a
capital letter — ' Him ' and ' His ' — she swallowed her scruples,
and merely said (what everybody thought) that Lady Jersey
would look handsome if she would not affect at forty-eight to
be eighteen. A large gold repeater, given by the Prince Regent
to George Siddons, is now in the possession of Miss Harriot
Siddons, to whom it was left by her cousin, Colonel W. Siddons
Young.
In less than a month from the date of her uprise in 1782,'
Mrs. Siddons had completely secured — as Horace Walpole's
discernment did not fail to note — the admiration of those Tate
Wilkinson designates ' people of the great lead.' On December
4th, one of the newspapers remarked that ' on a Siddons night/
' Drury Lane looked more like a meeting of the House of Lords
than a theatre — four stars in one box, and scarcely any box
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 251
without one ! ' Mrs. Siddons's benefit book, ' as it lay open
in the lobby/ was spoken of as ' the Court Guide.' Every
attempt being fruitless to procure boxes at short notice, ladies,
to behold her, were willing to struggle through what one of
them termed 'the terrible, fierce, maddening crowd into the pit.'
And Mrs. Siddons was the fashion, not only for a season or
two, but throughout her life. Boaden, holding, in his Life of
Mrs, Jordan^ no brief for the tragic lady, rather vividly says
that she
"maintained a distance in her manners that irritated the
self-love of those with whom she mixed in the business of the
stage ; and she was supposed to shew rather strongly the con-
sciousness of living familiarly with the higher orders. She had
in fact monopolized their attention and their patronage. Her
nights of performance alone were well attended, and she had
two benefits each season, for which every thing fashionable
reserved itself; and the benefits of others, if she did not act for
them, were reduced nearly to the actor's private connexion, and
many were disappointed in their little circles, by an apology
that ended with 'You know we must go on Mrs. Siddons's
night, and we then leave town directly."
In an age when the House of Commons, on a motion by
Pitt, adjourned, and went down to the theatre, to see Betty play
Hamlet, it is no wonder that Mrs. Siddons seemed an integral
part of the national life. Pitt was one of her earliest admirers,
and his tall, attenuated figure — he was known, among Foxites,
as ' the Devil's darning-needle ' — was as familiar a sight on her
first nights as was the misshapen figure of Gibbon, before he
left Bentinck Street to return to Lausanne. As has already
been said, Fox, to whose noble zest the occasion must have been
meat and drink, watched the curtain first rise on the most
wonderful Shakespearean impersonation of all time, Mrs.
Siddons's Lady Macbeth, and, in thinking over the personal
traits of that sanguine, magnetic member of her audience, one
reflects that in one characteristic, at least, he resembled her, for
Rogers says that Fox, too, conversed little in London mixed
society, but, at his own house, with intimate friends, would talk
on for ever, with the openness and simplicity of a child.
In Mrs. Siddons's autobiographical Memoranda, we read —
2$2 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
"He [Reynolds] always sat in the orchestra; and in that
place were to be seen, O glorious constellation ! Burke, Gibbon,
Sheridan, Windham, and, tho last not least, the illustrious Fox.
. . . All these great men would often visit my dressing-room,
after the play, to make their bows, and honour me with their
applauses. I must repeat, O glorious days ! "
Windham's exceeding admiration of Mrs. Siddons's acting
is forcibly illustrated by a simple statement in his Diary,
under date, February i$th, 1785 — "Drove from the House of
Commons, without dining, to Drury Lane, to Mrs. Siddons in
'Lady Macbeth.'" Personally, Windham liked her greatly.
Under ' May 24th, 1787,' he wrote, " Went out, in order to learn
from Miss Adair whether I was to sup with her or not — or
rather to put myself in the way of being asked, having been told
by Mrs. Siddons the day before that she was to sup there."
What Scott said of writers, that the value of having access to
persons of talent and genius was the best part of their preroga-
tive is even truer of leading actors.
Among the higher compliments paid Mrs. Siddons was
her being celebrated, by name, in his Reflections on the French
Revolution, by Edmund Burke. If that affluent mind derived
delight from her acting, he, on his side, melted her to tears,
as she sat, in February 1788, beside Mrs. Sheridan, and
listened to the purple superlatives of his impeachment of
Warren Hastings, in Westminster Hall. "There," says
Macaulay, "Siddons . . . looked with emotion on a scene
surpassing all the imitations of the stage."
One of the prettiest episodes of Mrs. Siddons's life was
brought about by Reynolds's apotheosis of her as the Tragic
Muse, when the first P.R.A. inscribed his name on the border
of her drapery (as he had done on that of Lady Cockburn)
and, upon her looking into the border to examine the * Joshua
Reynolds Pinxit 1784,' which, at a distance, she took to be
a golden pattern, he uttered the gracious sentence that 'he
could not lose the honour this opportunity afforded him of
going down to posterity on the hem of her garment.' He,
likewise, she recollected — when she described, in later years,
those memorable sittings — guaranteed the colours of her
portrait never to fade as long as the canvas held together.
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 253
" Ascend your undisputed throne ! " he said, as he led her
to the platform in his painting-room, the gusto grande in
which he drew her already seething in his brain. "The
picture kept him in a fever," deposed Northcote, his whilom
pupil. Her sittings took place, presumably, late in I783,1
and while she herself was, temporarily, residing in Leicester
Fields.
The idea of an actress personifying the Tragic Muse
had been in the air since Garrick's Jubilee, and, in that
character, Romney, in 1771, painted Mrs. Yates. In various
provincial Jubilee revivals, Mrs. Inchbald, in her acting days,
walked, she tells us, 'in the always complimentary part of
the Tragic Muse.' Mrs. Barry, at Drury Lane, and Mrs.
Bellamy, simultaneously, at Covent Garden, had each supported
this symbolic role at the first London revivals, in 1769, of
the Stratford celebration. It is small wonder that, on
November i8th, 1785, a year and a half after Reynolds's
masterpiece was exhibited, Mrs. Siddons herself condescended
to be wheeled across the stage as Melpomene, in an attitude
that reminded every one of the picture. Even a Mrs. Siddons
must have been elated by such a portrait — such a superb
idealisation of herself and her profession. Lawrence's de-
scription of it, in his Presidential address to the Academy
students, in 1824, as 'a work of the highest epic character,
and indisputably the finest female .portrait in the world,'
elicited from Mrs. Siddons (<zt. 69) this letter : —
" ARRAN LODGE, BOGNOR
Deer. 23, 1824
" Situated as I am, with respect to the glorious Picture
so finely eulogised, and with its illustrious Panegyrist, what
can I say, where should I find words for the various and
thronging ideas that fill my mind ? It will be enough, how-
ever, to say (and I will not doubt it will be true to say) that
could we change persons, I would not exchange the Grati-
fication in bestowing this sublime tribute of praise, for all
the fame it must accumulate on the memory of the Tragick
Muse. — Yours most truly, S. SIDDONS"2
1 Reynolds's 1783 pocket-book is missing. In the pocket-book for 1784, Mrs.
Siddons's name does not appear among his sitters.
2 Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter Bag^ 189.
254 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Michael Angelo's Prophet Esaias1 of the Sistine Chapel,
with the two attendant figures behind, gave the greatest of
English figure-painters an inspiration for the mise- en-scene of
his diva Siddons, seated, amid lightning, in the empyrean,
her footstool on rolling clouds. Reynolds's strong taste
for an indefinite, goddess-like style of dress, in art, reasons
for which he adduced in his fourth Discourse, here reached
— for the attire of a real woman — its acme. It is some time
since 'the Tragic Muse' left Grosvenor House to be shown in
a public exhibition, but it only needs to be seen in a gallery
lighted from above to make its superiority to the Dulwich
replica more than ever apparent. Wherever the great picture
hangs, it dominates the room, and bears out one of Burke's
comments on Reynolds that he appeared to descend to
Portraiture from a higher sphere.
The lady who was, after Mrs. Siddons, the next most
famous sitter to eighteenth - century portrait - painters,
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was Mrs. Siddons's early
patroness, at Bath, and continued to be her friend. Mrs.
Siddons, in 1783, recommended Holcroft to her Grace,
and Holcroft gives an amusing account of the interview
which, in consequence, he had with that vraie grande dame.
' Fair Devon/ as the poets called her, was a declared admirer
of the Kembles, and when, in 1803, Covent Garden passed
into Kemble hands, she became the renter of one of the
private boxes, others of which were taken by the Northumber-
lands, the Abercorns, the Egremonts, and Lord and Lady
Holland.
Like Hugh Percy, second Duke of Northumberland, John
James, ninth Earl and first Marquis of Abercorn, was more
the John Kembles' friend than Mrs. Siddons's. He was
that eccentric grand seigneur, proud, almost to the point of
mania, whose groom of the chambers had to fumigate the
rooms he occupied after liveried servants had been in them,
and forbid the chambermaids to touch their master's sacred
bed, except in white kid gloves. Surviving till 1818, this
magnifico lived to see strange sights. Even by 1800, the
ancien regime was disintegrate. The * glorious bonfire' in
1 Or, almost equally, the Joel.
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 255
France had burnt up its hair-powder, and Lord Abercorn
was already out of date. Alive enough, however, to be dubbed
' Bluebeard ' for marrying a third wife, Lady Anne Hatton, a
widowed daughter of the second Earl of Arran.
Of all the people high in place who contrived — principally,
in their country houses — to see a good deal of Mrs. Siddons
during the brief recesses her alternating London and provincial
seasons allowed, Lady Harcourt should be first named. As
early as 1786, Mrs. Siddons told Whalley, " In September, I
shall be as usual at Nuneham, near Oxford, a seat of Lord
Harcourt's." Lady Harcourt was born Elizabeth, daughter
of Lord Vernon. She married George Simon, Viscount Nune-
ham, who, in 1777, became Earl Harcourt. He had large
property, looked French, possessed a fine taste in the arts,
and etched so as to win encomiums from Horace Walpole.
Mrs. Siddons spoke of him as c a very ODD respectable man/
but her disparaging tone may possibly be traced to the coldish
estimate her noble friend had formed of her Lady Macbeth
(see p. 1 68).
Nuneham Park was habitually ordered in such a style that
when, in 1786, the King and Queen and several of their
children paid a visit there, from Windsor, the Harcourts could
invite them to stay on three days, entertaining them adequately
a rimprevu. This was the identical visit to Nuneham of which
Fanny Burney, who came in the Royal suite, gives a dismal
obverse in the second volume (Mr. Austin Dobson's edition)
of her immortal work. It was amid Nuneham's splendid
hospitalities that Mrs. Siddons first encountered Gray's Mason,
Divine and Poet, who had expressed himself anything but
an admirer. It was a critical meeting, but how was a poet
to resist the present persuasiveness of the most magnificently
lovely woman of her day? He was very soon practising a
piano duet with her, and giving her his arm round the gardens.
Lady Harcourt was a Lady of the Bedchamber, and took part
in receiving Mrs. Siddons at Windsor when she went to
read there.
Mrs. Siddons nowhere expresses any consciousness of
constraint or weariness on visits — nothing of what the sharper-
sensed Lady Morgan meant when she said, "people are mis-
256 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
taken as to the pleasures of a large society in great houses —
there is an inevitability about it that is a dead bore" Turtle
and venison, and pines and grapes, and lords and ladies every
day agreed passing well with the woman who had begun life
as an obscure player girl. She disliked being snubbed, which,
perhaps, is one reason why we do not read of her 'being
frightened at H.H.,' as Sydney Smith described the process
of being entertained in Lord Holland's famous mansion, where
her brother was on the visitors' list.
We have already seen her in friendly intercourse with the
second Earl of Hardwicke. The Yorke family touched eighteenth-
century life at every point, and that rich collection of docu-
ments, the Hardwicke Papers, purchased by the Government
from the late Earl of Hardwicke, contains a number of letters
and short notes from Mrs. Siddons, some written by her
husband's hand.
Among ladies who were friends, and not only acquaintances,
of Mrs. Siddons, there was no more remarkable figure than the
Hon. Mrs. Darner. At twenty-eight, the childless widow of a
fool of fashion, Mrs. Darner, who, on her own side, or her
husband's, was related to half the peerage, was a fervent demo-
crat. To her, all things were dross compared with the practice
of sculpture, and at that she plodded, through a long life. For
the most part, her work was roughly finished — Rodinesque.
The masks of Thame and Isis on Henley Bridge, and the
sculptured decoration of the bridge at Banff are from her
'classic chisel,' and she made statues, or busts, of George in
and George IV, Fox, Nelson, Sir Joseph Banks, Mrs. Siddons
(a bust, as the Tragic Muse), Miss Berry, herself, and other
well-known people. In September, 1794, her kinsman, Horace
Walpole, had an early glimpse of her bust of Mrs. Siddons, and,
said he, " a very mistressly performance it is indeed." It was,
in all probability, a copy of this that Mrs. Siddons, in the same
year, presented to Mrs. Inchbald, spoken of by the latter as by
Mrs. Darner. A forgotten, but agreeable, book, The Queens of
Society, by Grace and Philip Wharton, states that Mrs. Darner
gave three busts, representing Mrs. Siddons and the two
Kembles, to her friends, the Greatheeds. Three such busts, in
plaster, are now in the hall at Guy's Cliffe, but one of them, at
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 257
least, that of Mrs. Siddons, proceeded from the atelier of
Joachim Smith, F.S.A., of Bath, and is a replica of the bust,
inscribed ' J. Smith fecit' 'Published 1812,' at Stratford, repro-
duced to face p. 282.
When, in 1797, Walpole (Lord Orford) died, he left his
country house to Mrs. Darner, for life, as a residence, with
£2000 a year to keep it up, and at Strawberry Hill Mrs.
Siddons was frequently entertained by her, as, also, was
Patty Wilkinson, who, one notes, was not only the all-weathers
companion, required to attend her padrona to the theatre,
but, equally, the adopted daughter, whose name constantly
appears, coupled with the senior lady's, in replies to formal
invitations. No doubt, the similarity of their tastes chiefly
made, and kept, Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Darner great friends.
It is 'pretty' (in Pepys's sense) to know that while at
' Strawberry,' Mrs. Siddons acted with her hostess, who was
a clever amateur. In 1812, Mrs. Darner ceded the house to
its real owner, Lord Waldegrave.
While there, she had been the means of Mrs. Siddons seeing
something of her own attached friend and neighbour, the widow
of Garrick. A few weeks before that then all but centenarian
lady died, in 1822, she made a codicil to her will, to the follow-
ing effect : —
" I give to Mrs. Siddons a pair of gloves which were
Shakespeare's, and were presented by one of his family to
my late dear husband, during the jubilee at Stratford-upon-
Avon."
Miss Monckton, afterwards Countess of Cork and Orrery,
was one of the lion-hunting type of great folk who, early,
pounced decisively on Mrs. Siddons. According to Fanny
Burney, Miss Monckton, at her assemblies, "mixed the rank
and the literature, and excluded all besides." She was a born
society woman, with ' an easy levity in her air, manner, voice,
and discourse.' It was that easy levity, I doubt not, which
bowled over Dr. Johnson, always so ductile and pleasant in
the presence of high-bred grace. The old gladiator loved to
take Miss Monckton up sharp, and, in after years, she used
to boast that he had. She said, once, to him, " Sir, that is a
very nice person." " A nice person," he replied, " what does
258 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
that mean? Elegant is now the fashionable word, but will
go out, and I see this stupid nice is to succeed to it; what
does nice mean ? look in my dictionary, you will see it means
correct, precise." Mrs. Siddons tells the oft-quoted story x of
a 'blue evening,' in 1782, at Miss Monckton's, prefacing it
by the statement that she had been decoyed to Charles Street,
on a promise of no crowd.
"The appointed Sunday evening came. I went to her
very nearly in undress, at the early hour of eight, on account
of my little boy, whom she desired me to bring with me,
more for effect, I suspect, than for his beaux yeux. I found
with her, as I had been taught to expect, three or four ladies
of my acquaintance; and the time passed in agreeable con-
versation, till I had remained much longer than I had
apprehended. I was of course preparing speedily to return
home, when incessantly repeated thunderings at the door,
and the sudden influx of such a throng of people as I had
never before seen collected in any private house, counteracted
every attempt that I could make for escape. I was there-
fore obliged, in a state of indescribable mortification, to sit
quietly down, till I know not what hour in the morning ; but
for hours before my departure, the room I sat in was so
painfully crowded, that the people absolutely stood on the
chairs, round the walls, that they might look over their
neighbours' heads to stare at me . . ."
In addition to friends named in an earlier chapter, frequent
country-house hosts of Mrs. Siddons's were, says Campbell,
Mr. and Mrs. Halsey, at Henley Park ; the Elliots, at Hurst ;
the Marlows, at St. John's College, Oxford ; the Freres, at
Cambridge; the Blackshaws, at their seat in Berkshire; and
Lady Barrington, at Bedsfield, while — of persons unmentioned
already — he oftenest met, at her own house, during the last
fifteen years of her life, Mr. H. Addington, Lord and Lady
Scarborough, Dr. Batty, ' Conversation ' Sharp, Lord Sidmouth,
Countess Clare, Professor Smyth, the Rev. Mr. Milman, Mr.
and Miss Rogers, and Lady Charlotte Campbell.
1 Also given by Fanny Burney, and, in a somewhat fictitious, or heightened, form
by Richard Cumberland, in The Observer, i. 224-226, 1785, 'Character of
Vanessa,' etc.
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 259
In a series of eight 'Sonnets on Eminent Characters,' by
young Coleridge, that appeared, late in 1794, in The Morning
Chronicle, one — in which Coleridge had Lamb's assistance —
was addressed, on December 29th, to Mrs. Siddons. It ran as
follows : —
"As when a Child on some long Winter's night,
Affrighted, clinging to its Grandam's knees,
With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight
Listens dark tales of fearful strange decrees
Mutter'd to Wretch by necromantic spell
Of Warlock Hags, that, at the 'witching time
Of murky Midnight, ride the air sublime,
Or mingle foul embrace with Fiends of Hell —
Cold Horror drinks its blood ! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the Beldam tell
Of pretty Babes, that lov'd each other dear —
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell :
E'en such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart ; —
E'en so thou, SIDDONS ! meltest my sad heart ! "
With the leaders of the new poetic movement, the new
romance literature, burgeoning all around during her prime,
Mrs. Siddons had, except with Scott, no dealings. Probably,
she met Byron (whose mother, when Miss Gordon, had shrieked
and fainted, in Edinburgh Theatre, at her cry of ' Oh my Biron !
my Biron ! ' as Southerne's Isabella) and, if she did, the occasions
should have been memorable to those who never, elsewhere,
could expect to see two faces so godlike together in one room.
The man for whom imaginative contemporaries were uniformly
enthusiastic was himself enthusiastic as to Mrs. Siddons's genius.
Byron said that, of actors, Cooke was the most natural, Kemble
the most supernatural, Kean the medium between the two, but
that Mrs. Siddons was worth them all put together. In the
day of Miss O'Neill, he consistently refused to see her, ' having
made, and kept a determination to see nothing which should
disturb or divide ' his ' recollection of Siddons.' These were no
shallow compliments for even Mrs. Siddons to elicit from the
giant personality Byron remains, in spite of the flippancy, the
meannesses, the lack of self-respect.
Mrs. Siddons knew Byron's loyal friend, Moore, the smallest
gentleman then visible in society. Little in mind, but brilliant
in imagination, and ' as good a creature ' (in Miss Berry's phrase
26o THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
for him) ' as ever lived,' ' Anacreon ' Moore sang his own fervent
songs (in the very fashionable drawing-rooms he frequented)
as if every voluptuous word were applicable to the women
around him. Mrs. Siddons, for one, loved to listen, whenever
he sat down to the piano, playing, softly, an almost nominal
accompaniment, and her quick sensibility never denied him his
ardently desired tribute of tears. She was, as might be expected,
responsive to all emotional music. James Beattie tells how,
when he played ' She rose and let me in ' to her on his 'cello,
she said, " Go on, and you will soon have your revenge," meaning
he would draw as many tears from her as she had drawn from
him. Incledon, preposterous braggart that he was, talked — in a
coach — in 181 i,of her appreciation of his own singing, as follows: —
" Ah ! Sally's a fine creature. She has a charming place on
the Edgeware Road. I dined with her last year, and she paid
me one of the finest compliments I ever received. I sang
* The Storm ' after dinner. She cried and sobbed like a child.
Taking both of my hands, she said, ' All that I and my brother
ever did is nothing compared with the effect you produce ! ' "
Miss Scott-Gardner communicates to me an account of her
mother, when a child of seven, in 1817, having been heard
singing to her doll, in a married servant's garden, at Peckham,
by a lady and gentleman, the former of whom said, over the
gate, that she would give her a shilling to sing again. The
child replied she would sing without the shilling, and did so.
The lady and gentleman, who were Mrs. Siddons and Kemble,
were so much enchanted with the sweetness and flexibility of
her voice that they offered to bring her up for the stage. This
was not permitted, but, instead, Mrs. Siddons taught her to
sing. Hers were the only singing lessons she ever received, yet
her voice became so good that, in later life, she often went from
one friend's to another's, to sing a song at each house, and, in
1896, lying on her side, a fortnight before her death, she sang
' Molly Bawn,' with all its trills and turns, in perfect tune. Her
family always understood that ' Mrs. Siddons was not particularly
musical, but what she taught was her own perfect elocution and
voice production.'
A trait, contributed by Moore, shows our lady under another
aspect. On June 2nd, 1819, he writes —
" Dined at Horace Twiss's, in Chancery Lane : an odd
GREAT MEN AND GREAT LADIES 261
dinner, in a borrowed room, with champagne, pewter spoons,
and old Lady Cork. . . . Went up to coffee, and found Mrs.
Siddons, who was cold and queen-like to me. From thence,
about twelve, to an assembly at Mrs. Phillips's, where I saw
Mrs. Siddons again. Discovered the reason of her coldness :
I had not gone to a party she had invited me to ; and, by a
mistake, she did not hear of a visit I had paid her a day or two
after. All right again ! "
From this and various other records, it is agreeably observable
that, at over sixty, the doyenne of drama was not above going
later where others had dined.
Mrs. Siddons's name occurs in the bead-roll of celebrities
who assisted at Rogers's breakfasts, those elect meals — delight-
ful enough to overcome the almost universal dislike to that
mode of hospitality — where all the pillars of literature were to
be met, and none of the caterpillars. Mrs. Mair speaks of
opening a packet of letters from Rogers to her grandmother,
and being struck by the frivolity of his interests. In only one
note did he hint at any higher taste, when, speaking of an
evening he was to spend at her house, he added, "May we
flatter ourselves that we shall have Lear ? "
Scott, the English writer who, alone, shared with Byron in
something like a European reputation, was, we have repeatedly
seen, the friendliest friend to Mrs. Siddons, and her frequent
host at Ashestiel, and, later, at Abbotsford. ' The glory of the
Border ' had a limitless admiration for the subject of this book,
and when, in Anne of Geierstein^ at the supreme hour of
Margaret of Anjou's fate, at Aix, Scott confessed that the
expression and bearing of the exiled queen could only be
imagined by those c who have had the advantage of having seen
our inimitable Siddons,' he paid her as honouring a compliment
as Reynolds paid when he inscribed his name on the hem of her
garment.
There was much in Mrs. Siddons's personality calculated to
kindle peculiar enthusiasm inside the conical head of Sir Walter.
They were, in a way, kindred geniuses. The foundation of
excellence in all 'arts, good sense, was a prime characteristic
of the actress's. It was the substratum of the man whe said
he would " ' rather be a kitten, and cry, Mew ! ' than write the
262 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
best poetry in the world on conditions of laying aside common
sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world."
Both Mrs. Siddons and Scott demonstrated by their lives that
a person — whether man or woman — may carry genius to its
height without attempting .to be loosed from any sacred and
social bond.
Whatever may be alleged as to Mrs. Siddons's withdrawnness
and conversational stiffness, the fact that she was cherished,
as she was, by a class of society with whom high profes-
sional capacity has rarely, if ever, been counted a justifica-
tion for lack of urbanity proves that she cannot have lacked ' les
manieres nobles et aiseesl She may have been, and, probably,
was, ambitious of splendid acquaintance, but, if so, the inclina-
tion was mutual.
That, as a consequence of her calling and pre-eminence
therein, she expected social attention, and was apt to sulk, if, by
accident, it was denied her, is clear, but that she was, to any
abnormal extent, greedy for admiration, cannot, reasonably, be
affirmed. Though it is hard not to fancy that she took
precedence somewhere between a royal and an ordinary
duchess, we find it stated that, in the society of the great, she
always pleased by * knowing her place/ A story which proves
that, even at fifty-nine, she must have possessed, off the stage,
some palpable quantum of power to captivate a susceptible
imagination is told by Mrs. Opie, who writes, on July 1st, 1814,
from 1 1 Orchard Street, to her father—
"The baron, William de Humboldt, was forced to attend
Lord Castleragh in a conference of nine hours yesterday ;
therefore he wrote me an elegant note of excuse, for not going
to see Mrs. Siddons with me ... we walked over to tell
Mrs. Siddons this, and she was somewhat mortified; but
recovered herself and was most delightful. We staid two
hours and more, and we none of us knew how late it was. She
said she had passed a most happy two hours, and had no
regrets. M[argaret — a girl staying with Mrs. Opie] came home
raving all the way, saying she was the most beautiful, delightful,
aud, I believe, even the youngest woman she ever saw; and she
has put up in paper, the bud of a rose she gave her, to keep
for ever."
XVIII
MRS. SIDDONS'S RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC
READINGS
IT is not to be supposed that Mrs. Siddons was so much
more fortunate than other artists as to escape the criticism
that imputes decay of power in postmeridian days. As early
as 1799, when she was only forty-four, Mrs. Trench (then Mrs.
St. George) thought her creativeness declining. " I think," she
wrote, " Mrs. Siddons is less various than formerly, and is so
perpetually in paroxysms of agony that she wears out their
effect. She does not reserve her great guns ... for critical
situations, but fires them off as minute guns, without any
discrimination." In the same year, we find, in a pamphlet
satire, My Own Pizarro, the somewhat corroborative line, —
"And pond'rous Siddons dragg'd the tragic chain,"
though on such a line, as evidence of declining originality, little
stress need be laid ; the less, since one of Mrs. Siddons's
triumphs (in Pizarro itself) in a new vein, occurred in this
very year.
There never, perhaps, was another great woman player, who,
after a long reign, contemplated, and effected, abdication on so
few suggestions from press or public. A letter l from Lawrence
to Farington makes it clear that Lawrence believed the season
(1809-10) of the O.P. riots to have been previously decided on
as her last. Six seasons earlier, when, in 1803, Kemble had
moved house from Drury Lane to Covent Garden, Boaden says
that Mrs. Siddons, after a ' struggle of thirty years/ might well
have thought of retirement, had not devotion to her brother
induced her to give him her still important support in his
1 Sir Thomas Lawrences Letter-Bag) 64,
263
264 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
venture. In proof, her first biographer quotes, as follows, from
a letter, written by her, in August, 1803 : —
"... Content is all I wish. But I must again enter into
the bustle of the world. For though fame and fortune have
given me all I wish, while my perseverance and exertions may
be useful to clners, I do not think myself at liberty to give
myself up to my own selfish gratifications . . . nothing but my
brother could have induced me to appear again in public [her
daughter, Sally, had died in the preceding March] but his
interest and honour must always be most dear to me."
Not till 1810, when Mrs. Siddons is fifty-five, does any
remark come from sworn admirers as to lessening ability for
her profession. On March i8th of that year, Scott writes to
Joanna Baillie, from Edinburgh, " Siddons' . . . mother is here
just now. I was quite shocked to see her, for the two last years
have made a dreadful inroad both on voice and person ; she has,
however, a very bad cold." Less than a year before, the voice,
here, perhaps, only temporarily behind a cloud, had been
enthusiastically described by Lamb's friend, Robert Lloyd, in a
letter, from London, to his wife, in Birmingham, as filling * the
immense expanse' of the Opera House,1 where the burnt-out
Covent Garden company was then playing. Another two
years after 1810, and Crabb Robinson reported on Mrs. Siddons
as Mrs. Beverley, " Her voice appeared to have lost its brilliancy
(like a beautiful face through a veil) ; in other respects, however,
her acting is as good as ever."
This last is the main point, and, here, most trustworthy
observers were at one. In all that truly constitutes the
great actress, Mrs. Siddons could never become antiquated.
Washington Irving saw her in 1805, and said —
" I hardly breathe while she is on the stage. She works up
my feelings till I am like a mere child. And yet this woman is
old, and has lost all elegance of figure. Think, then, what must
be her powers, that she can delight and astonish even in the
characters of Calista and Belvidera ! "
Irving was a stranger and newcomer, but, as a matter of fact,
Belvidera was one of the parts Mrs. Siddons was less capable
of than formerly, on account of the physical exertion it exacted.
1 Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, edited by E. V. Lucas, 160, 1898.
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 265
With years, her portly person had become so corpulent, and —
though, in this, ahead of her years — so infirm, that, during her
last season, when, as Isabella, in Measure for Measure, she knelt
to the Duke, she could not get up without help, to mask the
necessity for which, Mrs. Powell, who played Mariana, was,
Genest tells us, also assisted in rising. Mrs. Siddons's increasing
bodily bulk had a great deal to do with a retirement that must
have surprised those, who, to be consistent, should have expected
her to continue to appear for the several further seasons during
which she might reasonably have hoped to make money.
On Sunday, June I4th, 1812, Miss Berry — we learn from her
'Journal* — was at an evening gathering chez Miss Johnstone
(afterwards Duchess of Cannizzaro) at which Mrs. Siddons
repeated to her, in a corner, alone, the verses she was intending
to recite at her Farewell, the date of which had been announced
a fortnight earlier. " They are by her nephew Twiss," added
Miss Berry, " and I thought them in good taste." Many weeks
before this, the verses had been written, proffered, and weighed,
as is shown by the following letter from Mrs. Siddons, which
their author's grandson, Mr. Horace Twiss, allows me to print : —
" WESTBOURNE FARM,
March y.stt 1812
" MY DEAR HORACE, — In the Address you have sent me, you
have entered into my feelings of fitness and propriety completely
you have overcome all the difficulties which opposed you in the
construction of it, with much and very graceful adroitness ; in
short, to my entire Satisfaction. Nevertheless, as this will be a
composition much commented on, receive with my sincere
thanks, my earnest entreaty that you will consult those who are
nicer and less partial critics. Your honour being the only
Solicitude, I feel upon the subject. — Ever, My dear Horace,
Your affte. Aunt S. SIDDONS."
Mrs. Siddons's eleven ' last performances ' (June 8th — 29th)
formed an epitome of her creative work. During 1811-12, she
had acted in all, fifty-seven times, and in fourteen characters.
Her last representations seemed to the audiences a withdrawal
of the characters themselves, each by each, from personification.
Throughout the final season, there was a notice in the
Covent Garden playbills, " N.B. No orders can be admitted
266 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
on the nights of Mrs. Siddons's performance." More flattery,
more social attention, and, consequently, more worldly happiness
Mrs. Siddons had never tasted than during these culminating
months and weeks, and her spirits might have been kept in a
simmer of delicious delirium, had it not been for the sombre
thought of the meaning of retirement. To Mrs. Piozzi, with
whom she always went below the surface, she confided that she
felt * as if she were mounting the first step of a ladder conduct-
ing her to the other world.' It is harder to retire from the
stage than from any other profession. In the case of players,
no picture, poem, statue, or symphony is to survive as demon-
strably their work.
" Feeble tradition is their memory's guard."
On Mrs. Siddons's Farewell Night (which was also our own
Benefit), each box ticket l bore a red seal, with the word 'Farewell.3
The great genius of Tragedy rightly crowned her life's work
by selecting the tremendous wife of Macbeth as the character
in which to make her ultimate impression. In Lady Macbeth,
her art had reached its acme. To an almost miraculous extent,
she infused into the earlier scenes an atmosphere of mystery,
vastness ; a sense of fate, or retribution, hanging over all,
waiting its time. As for her acting in the supreme scenes, after
the murder of Duncan, that was, exclaimed Hazlitt — apt, always,
to be dithyrambic concerning Mrs. Siddons — " something above
nature. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from
her breast as from a shrine."
On this 29th of June, 1812, after what Leigh Hunt termed
' the bewildered melancholy ' of Mrs. Siddons's sleep-walking
— an overwhelming majority of the audience insisted on the
curtain falling on this, as the concluding incident of the play,
though a minority, Genest states, complained later, that, by
such summary procedure, the play had been truncated, and
they themselves docked of their money's worth. When the
scene closed, Mrs. Siddons was divested of Lady Macbeth's
apparel, and then, after an expectant twenty minutes' interval,
the curtain went up, to discover her, in white, seated at a table.
1 One of these — "Mrs. Siddons's Benefit, No. 176 Box" — is preserved in the
Shakespeare Memorial Gallery, Stratford-upon-Avon.
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 267
She rose, and came forward, but, for some minutes, was prevented
from utterance by the audience's acclamations. At last, she
was able to speak Horace Twiss's Address. Thus runs its
final verse : —
"Judges and Friends ! to whom the magic strain
Of Nature's feeling never spoke in vain,
Perhaps your hearts, when years have glided by,
And past emotions wake a fleeting sigh,
May think on her whose lips have pour'd so long
The charmed sorrows of your Shakespeare's song : —
On her, who, parting to return no more,
Is now the mourner she but seem'd before,
Herself subdued, resigns the melting spell,
And breathes, with swelling heart, her long, her last Farewell ! "
As she delivered these personal lines, to her so poignant,
the woman's anguish of departure overflowed the' actress's.
Kemble — her Macbeth in the play just over — led her, weeping,
away. The elan de coeur lifted, in one wave, the public and its
friend of thirty years, who had played with Garrick and with
Macready, and detonating cheers, expressing the whole-hearted
admiration of the house, from the peers to the porters, followed
her off the stage. All lamented that, while still in possession
of so much visible energy, she, ' the stateliest ornament of the
public mind,' should have felt herself summoned to part from
them. In their estimation, she took with her not only her
superlative reputation as an artist, but the lustre of a lifetime's
rectitude. " I never can help carryin ontil the stage my know-
lege o' an actor's preevat character," says the Shepherd of
Noctes Ambrosiana, and there can be no doubt that the
cognizance of Mrs. Siddons's honest life had, throughout her
career, added, for the onlooker, a deeper charm to her em-
bodiment of such parts as Desdemona and Imogen. A
thousand claims to reverence closed in her as mother, wife, and
Queen of drama. Exit Mrs. Siddons.
There is no evidence to prove that this great player was,
for an artist and an actress, to any abnormal extent avid of
praise. " The applause that is the palm of Art is necessarily
sweet to my sense," she wrote, in 1793, to John Taylor, and
so much was reasonable. I confess I am sufficiently in love
with my subject to believe her to have been guiltless, in a high
268 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
and rare degree, of the pettier human depravities. Hazlitt
spoke of an 'elevation and magnitude of thought' of which
her noble form seemed the natural mould and receptacle, and
one is convinced that she who knew the heart of human nature,
* Our sad moods, and the still eve's crimson glow '
was not devoured by a petrifying and murderous vanity.
Professional jealousy is an inevitable element in the player's
lot, and not even a Siddons, supremely though she towered
above contemporaries, was so faultless as never to feel anxiety
concerning the maintenance of her pre-eminence. She had
an extraordinary — and well-founded — belief in herself, and
scant humour. When people impugned her, she spoke of the
" malignant treachery " her " enemies could devise," and attri-
buted their attacks to " hell-born malice." " My victorious
faith," she went on, " upholds me."
Her literalness was, in all probability, the real reason why,
in her own day, she was by some persons considered ultra-vain.
To meet flattery, she had no disclaiming phrases. Aware of
her genius, she referred to it, as a philosopher might have done,
impartially — as a natural phenomenon. ' Sir [ ] ' told Lady
Charlotte Campbell he was present when, a lady having taken
her little girl to her house that, in after years, she might boast
she had seen Mrs. Siddons, the latter took the child's hand,
and, in a slow and solemn tone, said : " Ah, my dear, you may
well look at me, for you will never see my like again."
It has been assumed, from a remark she made to Rogers,
that Mrs. Siddons felt 'an envy to' her brother because his
taking leave of the stage eclipsed hers. This was a momentary
weakness. If she had an absurdity of disposition, it was family
self-satisfaction, exaggerated pride in the Kemble gens. In
relation to John, she spoke of herself as ' one whose affection
is unlimited, and to whom he is as dear as brother can be to
a sister.' After the Covent Garden fire, she thus eulogized
him, to Mrs. Fitzhugh, in a letter in the Alfred Morrison
Collection : —
"... you would participate the joy I feel in beholding this
ador'd brother stemming the torrent of adversity with a manly
fortitude, serenity, and even hope, that almost bursts my heart
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 269
with an admiration too big to bear, and blinds me with the
most delicious tears. . . . Oh ! he is a glorious creature ; did
not I always tell you so ? Yes, yes ; and all will go well with
him again. He bears it like an angel too."
Seven months after Mrs. Siddons's official retirement, she
gave a Reading, in aid of the widow and orphans of Andrew
Cherry, the dramatist and actor, and this resuscitation of
function preluded many further Readings of which old
newspapers garner the announcements. Kemble told Boaden
his sister's means were insufficient to maintain her in complete
comfort without some additional money-making, but no doubt,
her major inducement was the passion for interesting an
audience. Acting was the love of her life.
The apparatus at the Readings was simple. Mrs. Siddons
stood, and, on other occasions, sat to read, in front of a large
red screen. Behind it, a light was placed, with the result that
" as the head moved, a bright circular irradiation " enhaloed its
outline. On a lecturn before her, was placed a copy of the
play. A gentleman, frequently her nephew, Twiss, formally
handed her to and from her place.
Her utterance was as much recitation as reading, if we
may judge from Campbell's statement, " When her memory
could not be entirely trusted she assisted her sight by
spectacles, which, in the intervals, she handled and waved so
gracefully, that you could not have wished her to have been
without them." She was dressed, says the same reporter, in
white, with her hair a la grecque. At a later date, Fanny
Kemble speaks of her wearing ' a mob-cap.' On the platform,
Boaden says she exactly recalled Lawrence's full-length of her
(there, robed in velvet) reading Milton. With the shackles of
sixty upon her, she yet had no wrinkles. In 1814, Crabb
Robinson wrote of her still fascinating smile. I was recently
shown a lock of her hair, strong and grey — presumably, the
shade it was, at this period, attaining. Never would she lose
that roundness and graciousness of gesture, and that ready,
descriptive aid of the wonderful hand, which, in the largest
gathering, distinguish a once great actress from other
women.
Fanny Kemble says Mrs. Siddons's readings of Macbeth
and King John were the raandest dramatic achievement
270 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
imaginable with the least possible admixture of the theatrical
element. Mr. J. H. Leigh has lent me a calf-bound copy of
Othello (bought for Mrs. Siddons, by Mrs. Fitzhugh, for 'its
good large type') which Mrs. Siddons used, and, previously,
* cut ' and pencilled, for her Readings. On the blank page,
opposite ' Dramatis Persona} in large writing, to be easily read,
the following is written, in Mrs. Siddons's hand : —
"The Play which I am to have the honor of reading to
you this evening Ladies and Gentlemen is the Tragedy of
Othello. It will be considerably shortened, by the omission
of several exceptionable passages, and I shall rely on your
often-experienced indulgence to excuse any defects which
your Taste and Judgment may discern either in the arrange-
ment or the execution of so arduous an attempt. The
Characters of this Tragedy are . . ."
Boaden states that Mrs. Siddons did not attempt mimicry
of men in the men's parts. It is noticeable, in the play
before me, that every emphatic word is underlined, as showing
the tendency to overaccentuate which she and her brothers
carried so far that, with John, valueless words were accentuated.
Speaking of the too elaborate emphasis given, in modern
declamation, to insignificant words, " That was brought in by
them," said cute old Mrs. Abington to Crabb Robinson,
respecting the Kembles.
Owing to the kindness of Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, I am able
to quote from the immediate notes made by Professor G.
J. Bell on Mrs. Siddons's reading of Shakespeare. He
remarked : —
" Reynolds's picture of Mrs. Siddons as the tragic muse
gives a perfect conception of the general effect of her look and
figure. . . . She sat on a chair raised on a small platform, and
the look and posture which always presents itself to me is
that with which she contemplates the figure of Hamlet's ghost.
Her eye elevated, her head a little drawn back and inclined
upwards, her fine countenance filled with reverential awe and
horror, and the chilling whisper scarcely audible but horrific.
She gave . . . more fully the idea of a ghost's presence than
any spectral illusion on the stage."
Mrs. Piozzi shrewdly said that, to her, personally, Mrs.
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 271
Siddons's power of amusing five hundred persons, without help
from fellow-actors, stage, or scenery, was a stronger proof than
anything in her previous career of the mighty actor she was.
It is interesting to find, in the Mrs. Siddons of sixty, that great
sign of a first-class mind — its intellectual account is never
closed. She was as able as ever to adopt a fresh or correcting
suggestion. Greatheed told Miss Wynn that after the publica-
tion of Guy Mannering, in 1815, he was struck by her new way
of reading the Macbeth witches' scene. Meg Merrilies had
explained to her Shakespeare's idea in the witches. Miss Wynn
added : —
" I can hardly conceive anything finer than the expression
which Mrs. Siddons gave to the simple reply, * A deed without a
name' It seemed full of all the guilty dread belonging to
witchcraft ; and it is just this idea of guilt which seems to me
so difficult to convey to our minds, which are so engrossed with
the folly of the whole thing that we do not recollect it was
a sin."
From the Heads of Colleges in both Universities Mrs.
Siddons received, in 1814, invitations to read to their elite — a
compliment never paid to Garrick. She went, both to Oxford
and Cambridge, to give these honorary readings, accompanied
by Cecilia, who told Patty Wilkinson, in a subsequent letter,
what gratifying attentions had been shown, at Cambridge, to
' our Darling,' her mother. The Trial Scene, in The Merchant
of Venice, was a selection chosen.
Mrs. Siddons did not, in her readings, confine herself to
Shakespeare and Milton. In 1813, in a letter to Mrs. Fitzhugh,
she speaks of having just read, to the Royal Party, at Windsor,
Gray's ' Elegy' and Marmion. She read in many places — in
London, in Mrs. Weddell's well-frequented drawing-room ; in
Dublin (in 1803), at the Lying-in Hospital rooms ; at Broadstairs,
at Mrs. Forsyth's, for the benefit of the Margate Sea-bathing
Infirmary. Half-a-guinea was well spent for the privilege of
listening to her potent eloquence. In a letter to Whalley, of
November I7th, 1813, Mrs. Piozzi 'half wished' that 'Louis
Dixhuit,' then in Bath, ' had heard Mrs. Siddons read Macbeth '
at Whalley's house in Queen's Square.
By her lifelong enthusiasm for Milton, Mrs. Siddons fulfilled
272 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Wordsworth's aspiration of linking the end of existence with
its commencement. Once, the moment she had finished reading
the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost, Sir William Pepys, who was
in the select audience gathered to hear her, spoke, offhand, the
following impromptu —
"When Siddons reads from Milton's page,
Then sound and sense unite ;
Her varying tones our hearts engage,
With exquisite delight :
So well these varying tones accord
With his seraphic strain,
We hear, we feel, in ev'ry word
His Angels speak again."
Sir George Smart, the musician, had a story of his meeting
Mrs. Siddons at the Countess of Charleville's, when she told
him how difficult she had found it to read Paradise Lost
properly, though she had been trying, all her life, to do so.
" Indeed," she added, " I never go without the book in my
pocket." Sir George, taking this for ' a bounce,' asked : " Have
you it now ? " and was rebuked by her producing — after slowly
searching in her large pocket — a small edition of the divine
poem. Perhaps, she instituted her habit of carrying a pocket
Milton, after the date when, reading the work at the lodgings
of the Rector of Exeter College, no Milton, and, equally, no
Shakespeare, was forthcoming in the whole of Dr. Thomas
Stinton's library.
Her dealing with Paradise Lost did not only consist in
reading from it. In 1822, John Murray published a 'Selection,'
sometimes entitled An Abridgement of Paradise Lost, by Mrs.
Siddons ; and, on the title-page of other copies, The Story of
our First Parents, Selected from Milton's Paradise Lost : For the
Use of Young Persons. By Mrs. Siddons.
A committee was formed for the purpose of persuading
Mrs. Siddons to return to the stage ; but she had, says Genest,
the good sense to refuse. He gives the list of her (nineteen)
stage appearances after her retirement. She was, of course,
frequently importuned to act for this person or that charity.
That she appeared on the stage too late in life, when she had
become unwieldy and masculine-looking, is a lamentable fact.
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 273
Macready, who saw her 1817 Lady Macbeth, went so far as
to affirm that there was ' no flash, no sign of her pristine, all-
subduing genius.' In the sleep-walking scene, Miss Wynn,
even as early as 1813, missed * the fine, fixed, glassy stare' of
yore. She did not know whether ' the diminution of the natural
fire of the eye' was the cause, or whether 'the muscles were
grown less flexible,' but of the fact she felt certain. In an 1816
' Examiner,' Hazlitt was caustic as to Mrs. Siddons's reappear-
ance in reponse to Princess Charlotte's wish that she and Prince
Leopold could see her play. " She always spoke as slow as she
ought: she now speaks slower than she did," he remarked.
And, after all, her exertion can scarcely have interested Prince
Leopold, for he never looked up from the book with which he
followed the play, though Her Royal Highness kept jogging his
elbow, and tapping him with her fan.
Mrs. Siddons's nearest friends bewailed her reappearances.
Scott, in 1812, had wished a 'long twilight' might be averted.
Mrs. Piozzi wrote, from Bath, on December I3th, 1815, to
Whalley, in Brussels, "... are you not sorry our dear Mrs.
Siddons had to act again for her son's distressed family? It
is really a great pity, and when a young successor has posses-
sion of the public favour! — that fine Miss O'Neill. Oh, how
the news did vex me ! " Two years later, George Siddons
wrote, from Sumatra, to Horace Twiss — in a letter placed at
my disposal by the present Mr. Horace Twiss — " I am quite
vexed to see that my Mother continues to perform occasionally,
and heartily wish that those who value her health — shall I
say her character — would prevail on her to give it up entirely
and for ever."
Yet, still, play-goers retained a venerating enthusiasm for the
dowager-queen, and when, the last time she ever acted, the
moment her young Norval had pronounced the line,
'As thou excellest all of womankind,'
the house gave three rounds of applause, not to Lady
Randolph, but to Mrs. Siddons in proprid persond. Fanny
Kemble describes how, early in the afternoon of this same
day (June 9th, 1819), her father took her into Covent Garden
to see the dense crowd waiting for the doors to open, and
18
274 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
how, a few hours later, inside the theatre, she heard ' the
tremendous roar of public greeting that welcomed ' the entrance
of ' a solemn female figure in black ' — her aunt.
That Mrs. Siddons, after 1812, should have painfully
missed the perpetual excitement of public exhibition, who
can wonder? For everything, including one's past, one pays.
After her retirement — she called her otium cum dignitate, ' her
alter'd life,' — she but rarely attended, as a visitor, the spot
' Where the spirit its highest life had led.'
The fire of temperament does not die out, even after the
period of the yellow leaf has set in. When, in these flat
and mediocre years, Rogers was 'sitting with her of an
afternoon,' Mrs. Siddons would say to him, " Oh, dear ! this
is the time I used to be thinking of going to the theatre;
first came the pleasure of dressing for my part, and then the
pleasure of acting it; but that is all over now." She could
have sympathised with Bliicher, who said, to Miss Croft, in
Lawrence's studio, " C'est seulement le repos qui me fatigue"
Under date, June 6th, 1828, Tom Moore's Diary contains
the following entry : —
"Dined at Rogers's. . . . An addition to our party in the
evening, among whom was Mrs. Siddons; had a good deal
of conversation with her, and was, for the first time in my
life, interested by her off the stage. . . . Among other reasons
for her regret at leaving the stage was, that she always found
in it a vent for her private sorrows, which enabled her to bear
them better ; and often she has got credit for the truth and
feeling of her acting when she was doing nothing more than
relieving her own heart of its grief. This, I have no doubt,
is true, and there is something particularly touching in it."
This was, as we have seen, Mrs. Siddons's lifelong senti-
ment. She had always disburdened into her parts some of
the heaviness of her personal cares. A sad letter, of 1815,
written by her to Mrs. Fitzhugh — the letter of an artist shorn
of the practice of her art — told much the same tale. She
wrote —
" I don't know why, unless that I am older and feebler,
or that I am now without a profession, which forced me out
RETIREMENT AND PUBLIC READINGS 275
of myself in my former afflictions, but the loss of my poor
dear Harry seems to have laid a heavier hand upon my
mind than any I have sustained. I drive out to recover my
voice and my spirits, and am better while abroad ; but I
come home and lose them both in an hour. I cannot read
or do anything else but puddle with my clay. I have began
a full-length figure of Cecilia; and this is a resource which
fortunately never fails me. ... I have little to complain of,
except a low voice and lower spirits."
XIX
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS
MRS. SIDDONS, as has been seen, continued to reside
at Westbourne Farm for five years after retirement,
growing her favourite pansies in the garden borders,
and taking walks with Patty Wilkinson on what Campbell
denominates ' the shores ' of the comparatively recently opened
Paddington Canal. There, he describes how, one day, he met
them, when himself dewy-faced from exercise, carrying his
great-coat, and in no fettle for unexpectedly encountering
' the Queen,' though on his way, all the same, to call on her.
Although Westbourne Farm contained, said Mrs. Siddons,
more accommodation than its appearance indicated, 27 Upper
Baker Street, the lease of which she took, in 1817, must have
been more commodious, especially after her addition to it of
the indispensable studio. The drawing-room, with its tall sash
windows, and railed parapet, giving on the 'small green,' or
garden, was of handsome dimensions. No. 27 was the first
house on the east side, and, thanks to the Prince Regent's
intervention, its end windows, looking north, were permitted
an unobstructed 'country view,' into the Regent's Park, to
obtain which privilege for the honoured actress, Nash had to
abbreviate Cornwall Terrace, then being built.
We know little of how Mrs. Siddons's successive homes
were furnished. The early nineteenth century was an age of
pier-glasses and l pendulesl of glazed lemon-coloured curtains
with dark chintz borders, and of whatever else Carlton House
taste judged genteel. It surprises one to read that the Baker
Street house was so out-of-date, or so individual, as to be
wainscoted with dark oak. In Changing London. Marylebone
(1906), Mr. J. Geo. Head, F.S.I., states that the drawing-room
276
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 277
had a curious fireplace with imposing terra-cotta columns on
each side, masking chimney flues. Writing six years earlier,
Mr. George Clinch, in his Marylebone and St. Pancras, was
able to state, from personal observation, " On the staircase is
a small side window of painted glass, containing medallion
portraits of Shakspere, Milton, Spenser, Cowley, and Dryden.
This is chiefly interesting from the fact that it is the work of
Mrs. Siddons, who designed it and put it up."
Since Mrs. Siddons's death in 1831, 27 Upper Baker
Street has been inhabited by Mr. Justice Grove, and, previously,
the story goes, by a fair lady admired by one of the exiled
French princes. Its final tenants were Mme. Guy d'Hardelot
and her husband. In 1902, the house was pulled down by
the Metropolitan Railway Co., to make room for their electric
railway. The L.C.C. tablet on the front, which, since 1876,
had marked it as Mrs. Siddons's, was replaced on the new
building,1 in 1905, accompanied by a supplementary roundel,
recording its refixing and the re-erection of the premises.
The oddly variegated tradition of the house is heightened
by a story, communicated to me by a great-granddaughter of
Mrs. Siddons, of how one of the later tenants, who had
previously been ' advised ' by the estate agent that Mrs. Siddons
' walked ' in it, saw " four times in broad daylight, the lower
part of a woman's figure going upstairs. The first time he
thought it was his wife and called out to her, but getting no
answer he went to the next landing and saw no one. The black
skirt was so real that he was able to count the flounces. His
mother-in-law had also seen it once. The staircase was a very
spiral one and it would be quite possible to see a part of a
figure without seeing the whole."
Not wealthy, but possessed of 'an elegant sufficiency,'
Mrs. Siddons, with a spacious drawing-room, and dining-room
beneath it, was able to give large evening parties. There was
no difficulty as to how to amuse people — she read Shakespearean
scenes to them, and they enjoyed the unique impression of
hearing each part, equally, rendered by a great actor. On one
of these occasions, Maria Edgeworth was present, and so carried
away by the verisimilitude of her hostess's Queen Katharine
1 Offices of the Railway, partly over shops.
278 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
that, in common, apparently, with the rest of the guests, she
forgot to applaud. " The illusion," she added, " was perfect till
it was interrupted by a hint from her daughter or niece, I forget
which, that Mrs. Siddons would be encouraged by having some
demonstration given of our feelings." Haydon, in his Auto-
biography, describes a soiree at Mrs. Siddons's, in 1821, at which
Sir Thomas Lawrence — too hastily haled from the refreshment
table to return to the reading — was to be heard, for some length
of time, guiltily endeavouring to finish eating a piece of toast
without any sound of crunching. This is the sole mention I
have come upon of Lawrence being in Mrs. Siddons's house
after the death of Sally. Hazlitt— to illustrate the ' valet-de-
chambre* aphorism — tells that he heard a guest's footman,
waiting in the hall downstairs, say to another footman, " What,
I find the old lady is making as much noise as ever ! "
There were other, more hilarious, festivals at No. 27, when
"about thirty of her young relatives, children, grandchildren,
nephews, and nieces were assembled" — the words are from a
pamphlet by Mrs. Jameson. At one such family gathering,
which took place only a short time before her death, old
Mrs. Siddons sat in her chair, looking on, " with great and
evident pleasure," while the shrill-tongued juveniles danced, in
the dining-room, and made merry. Mrs. Mair, in Recollections
of the Pasty recalls some of the dancers. Fanny Kemble, then
at the commencement of her stage career, was there, dancing
away, "glowing with life and joyfulness." Young John and
Henry (Charles's sons) were there, and the younger sister,
Adelaide, and Charles himself, " and his brilliant wife, with
her sparkling eyes and voice like a silver trumpet." There,
also, was Horace Twiss, cutting bad jokes, and, apparently,
in tearing spirits, though just dispossessed of a good appoint-
ment, owing to the unexpected downfall of the Tories. There
was the well-beloved Mrs. Henry Siddons, with her four
fatherless children. The rest of the party was made up of
friends, old and new, " all joining in respect and admiration
for her who had assembled them around her." If not on
this evening, certainly on others, the assemblage would have
been augmented by some of the six children of Anglo- Indian
George Siddons, who, by the way, grumbles, in his letters from
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 279
Calcutta, at the infrequent news he receives from headquarters
as to their welfare. In 1818, he tells Horace Twiss, "... My
dear mother writes to me much more frequently than I could
have expected, considering the pain it gives her to sit long
over pen and ink; but Cecy is lazy, and even good Patty
Wilkinson has not been on the alert lately." Again, in 1819,
" Many months have elapsed since I heard either from my
mother, from Cecilia, or from Patty Wilkinson. It is almost
as long since we heard from Mr. or Mrs. Fombelle. We
should have been in profound ignorance of all relating to our
children, but for the kindness of friends not connected with
us by any tie."
Home life does not consist of a perpetual ' At Home,' and
it was inevitable that Mrs. Siddons should find her unemployed
evenings long and empty. As she sat, chewing the cud of
bitter fancy, her nature was still thirsting for the stage illusion,
the dress, the scenery, the conventional surroundings, amid
which, alone — thanks to her Olympian sanity — her exuberant
emotionalism had been used to find vent. People report that
she resented the encroachments of physical infirmity, and found
old age hard to accept. Poor woman ! —
" Qui n'a pas F esprit de son &ge,
De son dge a tout le malkeur."
Then, also, came the departure of contemporaries. Not
counting that of Kemble, it is said she felt the going of
Mrs. Piozzi, in 1821, and of Mrs. Darner, in 1828, the most
severely. In the latter year, at Rogers's, she talked to Moore
of the loss of friends, and mentioned herself as having lost
twenty-six friends during the previous six years. For her,
unmistakably, the current was setting towards the shore of
death. Yet, the sadness of her last years, so violently
emphasised in Record of a Girlhood, was, probably, no greater
than the sadness of the old age of every one but the philan-
thropist. Except her modelling, Mrs. Siddons lacked inter-
esting resources apart from theatre and family. "/ am no
antiquarian," she announced, aridly, to Lady Harcourt, when
expressing her boredom at Kirkstall Abbey. We hear little
of her preferences in matters of taste.
280 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
She was not a much-travelled lady. The Oxford-bred
King of Poland wanted her, in 1791, to give him some
readings in Warsaw, but she remained unpersuaded. That
she appreciated the advantage of speaking 'the French,' of
which she herself knew next to nothing, is shown by her
taking her children to Calais to school. In 1790, after
dropping them there, at the end of their summer holidays,
she herself, accompanied by Miss Wynne (afterwards Lady
Percival, and Cecilia's godmother) and Dr. Wynne, made a
tour in the Netherlands. Michael Kelly, in his ' Reminis-
cences,' narrating his travels in 1790, writes —
"... at St. Omer, at the hotel where we dined, the land-
lady told us that Madame la grande actrice Anglaise Siddons
had just dined, and quitted the house not more than a quarter
of an hour before our arrival. I asked the landlady what she
thought of Mrs. Siddons ? — She said, ' she thought her a fine
woman, and thought she made it her study to appear like a
Frenchwoman ; but/ added the landlady, * she has yet much
to learn before she arrives at the dignity and grace of one.'
After this speech I could find nothing palatable in her
house."
Two summers after Mrs. Siddons retired, she relieved the
tcedium mice by a two months' visit to Paris. Cecilia went
with her, and Mrs. Jameson, the John Kembles, and Mrs.
Twiss were either in the party, or in Paris at the same time.
It was the Elba interlude, and Paris teemed with English
people. Campbell was one, and his biography of Mrs. Siddons
contains few better episodes than its account of how he
escorted her through the Louvre galleries. There, the grand
object was Apollo Belvedere. In front of that, after standing
for a time in silent admiration, Mrs. Siddons turned to the
poet, and exclaimed, " What a great idea it gives us of God,
to think that he has made a human being capable of fashion-
ing so divine a form ! " It is worth noting that not only
Campbell, but Crabb Robinson (who, also, saw her in the
Louvre) commented on her glorious looks. Even among
sculptured deities, Campbell observed every one gazing at
her, without knowing she was ' Mistress Siddons.' In the
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 281
evening of the same day, ' exhausted with admiring the
Apollo,' and after eating a 17 fr. dinner, she went to sleep
at the Opera — 'splendidly dressed/
Another day, not because she knew, one would say, but
because she did not know the value of money — in the form
of cab-hire — Mrs. Siddons was observed (by Kemble's un-
friendly biographer, John Ambrose Williams) toiling along,
on foot, in heat and dust, to see Louis xvill hold a review.
Though she does not seem to have echoed the bishop's wish,
' Paris en ce monde, Paradis en Vautrel she evidently did a
good deal of sight-seeing.
In an unpublished letter to a niece at Bath, dated
1 Bannisters Lodge Dec. 28, 1814,' Mrs. Siddons writes,
concerning her recent trip : —
" With Paris and its wonders I was much delighted and
much disgusted and tho glad to have been there am very
happy also to be at home again, I say at home meaning
England —
" It was an expensive jaunt, but I fancy we took the
only opportunity which the state of that unhappy country
is likely to afford we must however pay the tax of oeconomis-
ing for the gratification of our curiosity."
When the John Kembles had been a few months settled
* near the borders of the Leman Lake/ as Campbell puts
it, meaning at Lausanne, Mrs. Siddons and Cecilia, in July,
1821, paid them a visit. They found them 'perfectly happy/
surrounded by what were then termed ' the horrible grandeurs
of the Alps/ in their villa, Beausite ; as to which contented
British Cecilia, writing to Mrs. Fitzhugh, remarks that it ' has
been built by a person who has been in England, and there-
fore has some faint notions of comfort/ Mrs. Siddons was
( dying to see Chamouny/ but, the expedition being judged
too fatiguing, she saw Berne instead. She ate 'of chamois,
crossed a lake, mounted a glacier with two men cutting steps
in the ice with a hatchet, and bore all these fatigues 'much
more wonderfully than ' the others of the party. She was
occupied, and happy.
During the 'twenties, the interest felt in 'glorious old
Sarah/ as Wilson, in a late number of 'Noctes/ called her,
282 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
was, necessarily, in the main, retrospective. Joanna Baillie
thus expressed it : —
"And now in crowded room or rich saloon,
Thy stately presence recognised, how soon
On thee the glance of many an eye is cast,
In grateful memory of pleasures past."
Washington Irving met Mrs. Siddons in some one's 'rich
saloon/ soon after his Sketch Book had been published, by
Murray, in 1820, and was brought up to be introduced. She,
he recorded, "looked at him for a moment, and then, in her
clear and deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, 'You've
made me weep.' Nothing," added Irving, "could have been
finer than such a compliment, from such a source, but the
' accost ' was so abrupt, and the manner so peculiar that never
was modest man so put out of countenance." Two years later,
after the appearance of Bracebridge Hall, he again met her, and
a friend suggested presenting him. He declined, on the ground
that he had been, once for all, abashed and routed. " Come
then with me," said his friend, " and I will stand by you," so
Irving went forward, and, singularly enough, was met with,
" You've made me weep again." But he was now prepared, and
replied with a complimentary allusion to the effect of her own
pathos, as realised by himself.
Mrs. Siddons's serious integrity — all ' forthrights,' no
'meanders' — disconcerted strangers, and they thought her
wooden, or forbidding, or priggish, on account of it. Simplicity
was so essentially the atmosphere of her ideas, that it led her,
equally, to place literal confidence in professions which by
other people would have been received as mere politeness.
" She said she would have the roof off Westbourne Farm
because her landlord Mr. Cokerill [Cockerell] had said she could
do anything she liked." There was a naivet^ too, that, without
brutality, outwitted impertinence as effectually as verbal
cleverness could have done. Witness Sir George Smart's
account of an episode that occurred on July 4th, 1827, when he
met her at Lord Darnley's, at Cobham. During the evening,
one of the other guests went up to her, and said, " Madam, I
beg your pardon for asking so rude a question, but in con-
sequence of a wager allow me to ask your age." She replied,
1812
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 283
" Seventy-eight years old." " Damme," said he, " I've lost ! "
and abruptly went away. Mrs. Siddons immediately said,
" Puppy ! " " Very true," observed Sir George Smart, " but why
did you tell him you were so old?" She replied, " Whenever
a lady of an uncertain age, as it is termed, is asked how old she
is, she had better add ten or more years to her age, for then the
inquirer goes away saying, ' What a fine old woman ! ' "
Mrs. Siddons did not love brusque and incorrect references
to her earlier triumphs. In 1813, Edgeworth met her out
dining, and, " Madam," said he, " I saw you act Millamant
thirty-five years ago." " Pardon me, sir," she said stiffly. " Oh,
then, it was forty years ago." " You mistake, sir, I never acted
the character." Then, turning to Rogers, she said, " I think it
is time I should change my place," and, with great solemnity,
left her seat.
Like every genius whose soul is unconquered by the world,
she was integrally unsophisticated, and so remained, to the last.
Campbell deplored, to the Rev. Thos. Price, that, from a
memoir-writer's point of view, his subject had been all ' piety
and purity,' and had had, like the happy nation, no history.
" Dear good Mrs. Siddons, she was a very angel, but devils
make better stuff for biography." Mrs. Siddons was a prime
example of ' the genius of the race for conduct/ and it was that
the English Philistine venerated in her. Almost as much as
Queen Victoria, she elicited the plain man's respect — bone of
his bone — for a good and great woman. Not to her could be
applied what Quintilian said of a work of Seneca's, abundat
dulcibus vitiis. The faults she had were not charming. Her
nature was cramped by her lack of humour. One constantly
realises, moreover, that she was, to a very influential extent,
burdened by the consciousness of her profession. Respect-
able and prudish in grain, she felt, like Garrick before her, an
incessant obligation to walk circumspectly, in order to redeem
her call* g in the eyes of those the slang of the day denominated
' starch people ' — the unco guid. Campbell speaks of the
* defensive dignity ' she assumed to protect herself from the
insolence and familiarity of patronage, and this may well have
been the case. It was inevitable that this almost militant
attitude should react disadvantageously on strangers.
284 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Mrs. Siddons was present at the de"but of Fanny Kemble, as
Juliet, on October 5th, 1829, and cried with joy at her niece's
success. If Fanny felt any gratitude for such tears, falling
from the eyes of one, who, for thirty years, had swayed the
public imagination as no other actor had ever done, she
dissembled it in her references to her aunt in Record of
a Girlhood. It may be said that the painful impression those
references convey of ' weariness, vacuity, and utter deadness of
spirit . . . life absolutely without savour or sweetness' must
reflect general family observation. On the other hand, Mrs.
Mair protested against what she called her cousin's ' most
exaggerated view,' and attributed it to her everywhere ex-
pressed, rather disloyal abhorrence of the stage as a profession.
It is interesting to know that Charles Kemble fitted up a little
recess, or box, opposite the prompter's, expressly for Mrs.
Siddons, whenever she could come to see his daughter play.
" She came to it several times, but the draughts in crossing the
stage were bad."
\i\Recordofa Girlhood, the first mention of Mrs. Siddons
is the happiest. It commemorates one of Fanny's earliest
interviews with her, when, being taken, as a very tiny girl, on
the lap of ' Melpomene/ she looked up, and ejaculated, "What
beautiful eyes you have ! " Mrs. Siddons was of the children-
loving race. Grown-up outsiders might find her lacking in
facility, but, in the company of a child, austerity vanished,
and she became gay and full of smiles. Campbell called on
her, with his six-year-old son ' in his hand.' He had to
leave the boy for about an hour, and, when he returned,
found his ' face lighted up in earnest conversation with her/
She gave children her best, and gratified them by never
talking down to them. Mrs. Kay tells me of her mother,
Mrs. Drummond — when young, the ward of Richard (' Con-
versation') Sharp, one of Mrs. Siddons's favourite visitors
and hosts — being sent for by Mrs. Siddons to hear Shakespeare.
For the little girl's sole benefit, the past mistress went through
the whole of her marvellous Constance.
Lart tfetre Grandmere Mrs. Siddons successfully accom-
plished ; it came to her naturally. Mrs. Mair gives an
account of how she used to act cook to her little grand-
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 285
daughter, and receive her baby admonitions ; and how, a
little later, she would make her read to her (!) while she
modelled.
When, in 1815, her son, Henry, died, Mrs. Siddons — though
with her sight ' almost washed away by tears ' — kept repeating
the narcotic measure of a verse, which, she said, seemed, as
often as repeated, to tranquillise her. "The Lord gave, and
the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the
Lord." Seven years later, when she lost her sister, Mrs.
Twiss, Mrs. Pennington wrote to Dr. Whalley : " It must be
a shock to Mrs. Siddons, as I believe she was as much
attached to her as she could be to anything out of that
circle, within which she has long fixed her highest enjoy-
ments, and out of which, I am persuaded, she feels little
real interest." The comment indicates an observed develop-
ment of that indrawing of interest, usually described as the
petrification incident to old age, though, with equal likelihood,
it might be supposed to denote (other work being done) the
soul's last task — that of fixing its affections where true joys
are to be found. As early as 1816, W. W. Pepys may be found
writing to Hannah More : " I was pleas'd to hear Mrs. Siddons
say, upon my asking her whether she had read some modern
work, that her reading now, was chiefly confined to one
subject, which now seem'd to her to be the only one of real
importance."
The following lines, composed by Mrs. Siddons, may, pre-
sumably, be assigned to this period : —
" Say, what's the brightest wreath of fame,
But canker'd buds, that opening close;
Ah ! what the world's most pleasing dream,
But broken fragments of repose ?
Lead me where Peace with steady hand
The mingled cup of life shall hold,
Where Time shall smoothly pour his sand
And Wisdom turn that sand to gold.
Then haply at Religion's shrine
This weary heart its load shal lay
Each wish my fatal love resign
And passion melt in tears away."
286 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Every character simplifies with age, either in the direction
of spirituality or grossness. Into Mrs. Siddons's there came
no increasing inertia, or desire for ease. Years meant, with
her, we cannot doubt, a refining process. Her tinge of
Pharisaism — a general defect of her period — did not deepen
upon her. She had always been a moderate in religion, a
Churchwoman whom nothing short of a cold or a wet day
would have kept away from Sunday morning service. In
spite of her R.C. father, and the priests' education given to
her brothers, she had no sympathy with ecclesiasticism and
ritual, as she explained, at considerable length, in a letter to
Lady Harcourt, written after she had seen something, in 1790,
of foreign church ceremonials. Such opinions were skin-deep
in comparison with the prose sagacity that marks her avowal
to Ballantyne, in a letter of July 5th, 1807: ". . . in myself I
am sure I am not mistaken. It is a vulgar error to say we
are ignorant of ourselves, for I am quite sure that those who
think at all seriously must know themselves better than any
other individual can" Mrs. Siddons had not laid up for her-
self a cynical old age by expecting too much from life.
Words she wrote, in 1803, "The testimony of all ages is
folly if happiness be anything more than a name" represented
her habitual conviction. She had faith in the idea of re-
union with those she had loved, expressing her faith thus
characteristically : —
"I am one of those, whether rationally or not, yet surely
innocently, who look forward to the hope of meeting those I
love in a better world as one of the rewards for having struggled
with reasonable decency through this."
Though, during the final year or two, she ceased to read
Shakespeare, even in her own house, Mrs. Siddons, on days she
felt vigorous, used to describe herself as ' charming,' and, as late
as six weeks before her death, laughingly told her doctor,
Mr. Bushell, he might discontinue his visits, for she had ' health
to sell.' The doctor had been called in to fight what was, at
her age, a dangerous, as, with her, an ancient, enemy, erysipelas.
It had, long, recurrently afflicted her with burning soreness in
the mouth, and Campbell — who also suffered from erysipelas —
attributes her headaches to it.
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 287
The end of a life is always tragic. Payne Collier (to whom,
in 1832, Charles Kemble showed the last letter Mrs. Siddons
ever wrote) describes the once royally beautiful woman as
'haggard.' A letter she wrote, in 1828, to the Rev. — Denison,
speaks of 'the bitter cup' of painful illness. On May I3th,
1831, Fanny Kemble visited her, and wrote: —
" I was shocked to find her looking wretchedly ill ; she has
not yet got rid of the erysipelas in her legs, and complained of
intense headache. . . . Every time I see that magnificent ruin
some fresh decay makes itself apparent in it, and one cannot
but feel it must soon totter to its fall."
A drive in cold weather at the end of May brought back
erysipelas with increased intensity. Fever with rigors super-
vened, and Dr. Leman was sent for in consultation. For a
week, the patient suffered. Cecilia and ' Mrs ' (Patty) Wilkinson
were her loving nurses. On June 8th, 1831, at 8 a.m., the
wheels of weary life at last stood still. Mrs. Siddons expired,
" peaceably, and without suffering, and in full consciousness,"
wrote Fanny Kemble, on the day itself.
There was some question as to public obsequies, but a
section of the press, apparently, opposed the suggestion, and
the Charles Kembles, not specially desiring it, refused offers
from ' many of the Nobility and Gentry ' to follow in the funeral
train. To the public, Mrs. Siddons's death had taken place on
June 29th, 1812.
Her interment was conducted, on June I5th, by an under-
taker named Nixon. An upholsterer also, he had been her
landlord in Prince's Street, where, finding from his card his
secondary occupation, she had said, in 1804, "Well then, Mr.
Nixon, I bespeak you to bury me." Fully five thousand persons
are said to have witnessed her funeral. In the Morning Post,
June i6th, 1831, may be read as follows: —
"FUNERAL OF MRS. SIDDONS
" The mortal remains of this great actress, whose name and
fame must be immortal, were yesterday consigned to the grave.
" At nine o'clock there was a large assemblage of persons
in Upper Baker-street, to witness the funeral. At half-past ten
o'clock the signal was given for the mournful procession to
288 THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
move. The covering of the coffin containing the body was of a
rich purple velvet, and was placed in a hearse, drawn by four
horses, followed by two mourning coaches and four, containing
the relatives of the deceased. Afterwards fourteen mourning
coaches, drawn by two horses, each containing four gentlemen
mourners belonging to the Theatres ; two gentlemen's carriages
brought up the procession. The cavalcade proceeded along the
Park-road, Regent's Park, up the Alpha-road, through Princes-
street to Paddington Church, where the body was deposited in
a vault at a quarter past twelve o'clock."
In the vault of the church adjoining, Lady Hamilton,
in 1810, laid her devoted mother, Mrs. * Cadogan/ Thomas
Banks, R.A., the sculptor; the two Nollekens, father and
son ; Whitefoord, ' wit and diplomatist ' 1 ; Sir William Beechey ;
and, as we have seen, Haydon, were all buried in Paddington
Churchyard. Inside the church is a mural tablet to Richard
Twiss; and in the chancel, on the north of the altar, one,
in black and white marble, to Mrs. Siddons, bearing the
inscription —
Sacred to the Memory of
SARAH SIDDONS
Who departed this life June 8 1831,
In her 76th Year
* I know that my REDEEMER liveth.'
The stone over the vault in the burial - ground bore
similar words, and — selected by Mrs. Siddons herself — the
text, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." George
Siddons, who, on his retirement from the Bengal Civil
Service, lived, till his death, in Harewood Square, was buried
by the side of his mother. His wife, who survived him for
many years, lies there too. In 1890, Mr. Clinch wrote of
Mrs. Siddons's grave as ' marked only by a slab of cement,
bearing no legible inscription on its face, and distinguished
only by a half obliterated legend cut in its upper edge/ In
1907, the tomb was substantially restored by Mr. Henry G. I.
Siddons, and, in 1908, roofed with glass.
1 Dictionary of National Biography.
LAST YEARS AND SURROUNDINGS 289
Out of the life-story of the foremost woman England has
produced in the region of the arts one main impression
emerges. It is that, with her, the Muse was, indeed, a
* heavenly goddess,' and not a lawless runagate. Mrs. Siddons
possessed firmer moral equipoise, less of the seamy side of
the artistic temperament, than any other player of whose
actions and habits we have any record. It were well
with all actresses, with all artists, with all who belong
to neither category, if their worst defects proved, at the
last, a paucity of humour and a prudence somewhat over-
marked.
Mrs. Siddons stands, again, for the mother-woman in
combination with the supreme and instinctive actress, and
such women (if one can speak in the plural at all) are
exceedingly rare. At the same time that she was a con-
structive artist, ardent and tenacious in her calling, she was,
to the finest fibre of her nature, the simple being Campbell
called her. An affirmative, productive creature, ' a flash of the
will that can/ she possessed — for a player, in a unique
degree — the sincerity of greatness.
Her most distinctive characteristic of mind — a characteristic
that reappeared in several other members of her race, notably,
in her nieces, Fanny and Adelaide Kemble — was an extra-
ordinary sense of, and passion for, the ideal, joined with an
extraordinary personal power of impressing the sense of it on
others. As Stothard said, " Her own mind was noble, and that
made her acting so." Nothing about her was feline, nothing
serpentine. In virtue of her complete sanity, she may,
possibly, be termed, in minor matters, a Philistine, but,
whether so or not, she was, most certainly, an Olympian.
APPENDIX A (p. 188)
ELIZA?
MRS.SIDDONS had three daughters known to history, Sally, Maria,
and Cecilia, and two sons, Henry (Harry) and George John.
In Mrs. Siddons's letters to the Whalleys there occur four
passages that baffle the present biographer. They run : —
(March I3th, 1785) " Next week I shall see your daughter
and the rest. Sarah is an elegant creature, and Maria is as
beautiful as a seraphim."
(Sept. 28th, 1785) "Your little Eliza is as fair as wax,
with very blue eyes, and the sweetest tuneful little voice you
ever heard."
(Aug. nth, 1786) "My children are all well, clever, and
lovely. ... I want sadly to find a genteel, accomplished woman
to superintend my three girls under my own roof." [N.B.
Mrs. Siddons's third known daughter, Cecilia, Dr. Whalley's
godchild, was not born till 1794.]
(Oct. ist, 1786) "My family is well, God be praised! . . .
At Christmas I bring my dear girls from Miss Eames, or rather,
she brings them to me. Eliza is the most entertaining creature
in the world ; Sally is vastly clever ; Maria and George are
beautiful ; and Harry a boy with very good parts, but not
disposed to learning. My husband is well. . . ."
The tenor of the above extracts would lead a casual reader
to think of Mrs. Siddons as the mother of a schoolgirl, named
Eliza, the eldest of three daughters, though in no other letter
I can come across, from or to Mrs. Siddons, and in no published
memoir of her, or of any member of her circle, is any trace
of such an Eliza to be found. It is unthinkable that the death
of so old a child, occurring later than October ist, 1786, should
never have been referred to, in the intimate Pennington and
Bird correspondences that record the illnesses and deaths of
Maria and Sally. Equally impossible is it to imagine ' Eliza '
the daughter stated to have been born to Mrs. Siddons in 1781,
and to have died in infancy, the child whose name is given, in
290
APPENDIX A 291
the Bath Abbey Register, under Deaths, as Frances Emilia,
A reference made by Anna Seward to an approaching confine-
ment of Mrs. Siddons's, in 1783, can scarcely be linked with the
birth of a daughter, who, in 1786, was, apparently, a schoolgirl,
first named of three. Pending the possible unearthing of letters
explaining Eliza, we must stay ourselves on the surmise that
she may have been a niece, or protegee, of Mrs. Whalley, or of
Dr. Whalley — he had no child by any of his wives — who was
being brought up with Sally and Maria. Dorothy Place, it
may be remembered, and, also, Patty Wilkinson, were inmates
of the Siddons household. This surmise is, to some slight
extent, strengthened by the fact that Whalley used to call his
first wife (Elizabeth Sherwood) 'Eliza.' She lived till 1801.
The identity of Eliza is, up to now, as impossible to elucidate
as is that of the 'young woman,' mentioned by Campbell,
* who,' at Mrs. Siddons's funeral, ' came veiled,' and ' knelt beside
the coffin, with demonstrations of the strongest grief.'
APPENDIX B (p. 235)
THE appended list of Mrs. Siddons's nights, during her last
three seasons, has been kindly made for me by Mrs. Charles
Enthoven, from consecutive Covent Garden bills, for these years,
in her possession : —
1809-1810.
,8,«8n.
1811-1812.
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5
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S
ii
23
20
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15
10
25
9
8
7
14
9
8
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8
16
27
24
ii
18
17
28
12
13
10
18
12
ii
10
18
30
27
13
21
24
15
16
12
21
15
13
12
14
21
25
15
18
28
19
23
19
21
14
17
3
19
23
15
18
17
20
26
23
19
26
20
22
30
26
2O
30
25
24
28
21
26
26
30
23
27
28
29
31
i
4
13
7
2
5
5
9
2
7
5
4
9
II
II
7
9
12
1809-1810 —
1810-1811 —
1811-1812—
Total, 27 nights.
Total, 33 nights.
Total, 63 nights.
INDEX
Abercorn, (ist) Marquis of, 141, 254-5
Abington, Mrs. Frances, 27, 29, 63, 79,
107, 172, 270
Ancaster, (2nd) Duke of, 15 ; his
Duchess, 15
Ancaster, (3rd) Duke of, 16
Angelo, Henry, 65, 238
Anstey, Christopher, 46
Archer, Mr. William, 163
Arran, (2nd) Earl of, 255 ; and Countess,
224
Baillie, Joanna, 166-7, 2I4~5> 216,
282 ; her De Montfort quoted
63, 214
Ballantyne, James, 129
Bannister, John, 92, 178
Barry, Anne, afterwards Crawford, 2O,
41, 82, 91-2, 96, 171, 253
Barrymore, 158, 177
Bartley, George, 58
Bate, Rev. Henry, afterwards Sir Henry
Bate Dudley, 20, 21, 23, 24, 29,
42 ; Mrs. , 20
Bath, 34, 37, 44, 56, 68, 185, 186, 188,
254 ; Theatre, 31, 34, 35-42, 49-51,
52, 57, 168, 171
Beattie, James, 59, 62, 1 10, 260
Beaumont, Sir George, 218, 221
Beechey, Sir William, 60
Bell, Prof. G. J., quoted 73, 120-1,
122-3, I29, 270
Bensley, 24, 177
Bernard, John, quoted 10, 178
Bernhardt, Mme., 77, 121, 132, 241
Berry, Miss Mary, 172, 238, 240, 244,
246, 256, 259, 265
Betterton, 6
Betty, Master, 160, 251
Billington, Mrs., 176, 235
Birmingham, 30, 31, 33, 34, 1 12, 197, 241
Boaden, James, 4, 6, 7, 20, 22, 23, 37,
60, 115, 123, 124, 127, 131, 132,
133, 139, 140, 151, 184, 232, 234,
269, 270; quoted 56, 63, 64, 71, 78,
83, 118, 147, 173, 230, 251, 263-4;
cited 31-2, 50, 55; his Aurelio
and Miranda, 165
Boyle, Hon. Henrietta, afterwards
O'Neill, 18, 19, 98-9
Brecon, I, 7, 13, 14
Brereton, William, 24, 95, 101-4
Bruce, Lord, afterwards Earl of Ailes-
bury, 1 8, 19, 98
Brunton, Elizabeth, afterwards Merry,
169
Brunton, Louisa, 169
Burke, Edmund, 118, 163, 164, 248,
252
Burney, Fanny, 46, 47, 124, 167, 220,
246, 249, 255, 257, 269
Byron, Lord, 81, 83, 127, 165, 166, 180,
211, 219, 259, 261 ; Lady, 216,
219
Camden, Lord Chancellor, 46
Camp, M. T. de, afterwards Kemble,
149, 278
Campbell, Lady Charlotte, afterwards
Bury, 74, 258
Campbell, Thomas (poet), I, 9, 14, 23,
39, 57, 71, 80, 115, 117, 127, 143,
145, 154, 167, 195, 222-3, 240,
242, 245, 246, 247, 248, 280, 281,
283, 284, 286, 291 ; quoted note 64,
123-4, 269
Campbell, Thomas (sculptor), 62, 145
Caroline, wife of George IV, 191, 244
Catalani, 232, 235, 243
Chamberlain and Crump, 18
Charlotte, Queen, 33, 63, 67, 188, 243,
249-50
Cheltenham, 18, 98, 112, 197
Cherry, Andrew, 165, 269
Gibber, Colley, 160, 179
Gibber, Mrs. Susanna, 29, 69, 82, 168
Clairon, 76, 89
Clarence, Duke of, 175
Clinch, Laurence, 97
Clive, Kitty, 26, 29, 77
Coleridge, S. T., 156, 174, 211, 259
Collier, John Payne, 54, 148, 159, 222,
287
Colman, George, his English Merchant,
Colman, George, the younger, 124, 172
293
294
THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Combe, George, 206
Combe, William, 8, 10, 169-70
Congreve, 82, 162, his Mourning Bride,
68, 69, 75, 84; Zara, 76, 81
Cooke, G. F., 135, 138, 178-9, 180,
259
Covent Garden Theatre, 20, 21, 22, 41,
135, 138, 140-1, 147, 150, 169,
170, 171, 207, 231; O.P. riots,
232-4, 263
Cradock, Joseph, 49
Creevey, quoted 173
Croly, Rev. George, quoted 63
Cumberland, Richard, 71, 164 ; his
Carmelite, 166
Daly, Richard, 96, 98, 100-3, 173
Darner, Hon. Mrs., 241, 248, 256-7,
279
Darnley, Earl of, 224, 282
Davies, Thomas, quoted 42, 55, 57, 69 ;
Mrs., 23, 25
Derby, (i2th) Earl of, 172-3
Devonshire, Duchess of, Georgiana, 44,
52, 157, 254 ; Elizabeth, 60, 190
Dibdin, Thomas, 25, 165, 237
Diderot, quoted 26, 93
Digges, West, 101-6
Donne, William Bodham, 58
Doran, Dr., quoted 160
Downman, John, 60
Drury Lane Theatre, 18, 22, 24, 26, 27,
28, 30, 36, 38, 44, 48, 49, 52, 56,
97, 134, 135. 139, MO, 148, 149,
153, 156, 159, 160, 164, 172, 175,
176, 177, 180
Dublin, 7, 95-109, 173, 204, 205, 225
Edgeworth, Maria, 216, 277
Edinburgh, 109-11, 144, 148, 245, 264
Edwin, John, 37
Egan, Pierce, quoted 166
Erskine, Thomas, 68, 128, 219, 220
Evans (of Pennant), 13, 14, 15
Everard, Edward Cape, 26
Farren, Elizabeth, 3, 48, 79, 171-3,
175, 178
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 99
Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy, 3, 62
Fitzherbert, Mrs., 62, 163
Fitzhugh, Mrs., 61, 216-7, 270
Flaxman, 61, 62
Foote, Samuel, 247
Ford, Dr., 29
Fox, Charles James, 118, 163, 251-2,
256
Franklin, his Earl of Warwick, 58,
165-6
Gainsborough, Thomas, 20, 44, 58, 59, 64
Galindo, 224-7 ; Mrs., 185, 224-7
Gait, John, 174, 207
Garrick, David, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,
24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 69,
71, 77> 79» 82, 88, 106, note no,
136, 137, 142, i43> J6o, 168, 180,
181, 229, 233, 246, 249, 283 ; quoted
92; Mrs., 149, 257
Genest, Rev. John, 15, 49, 128, 130,
133, 138, 265, 266, 272 ; quoted 61,
127, 166, 173, 207 ; cited 65, 72
George in, 6, 35, 64, 67, 126, 159, 179,
249, 250, 256
George iv, 141, 163, 176, 187, 209,
223, 231, 240, 250, 256, 276
Gibbon, 251-2
Godwin, William, 85, 125-6
Goncourt, Edmond de, 12
Greatheed, Bertie, 15, 17, 142, 271 ; his
Regent, 90, 167 ; his son Bertie, 203
Greatheed, Lady Mary, 15, 16, 17
Greatheed, Samuel, 15
Guy's Cliffe, 11, 15, 16, 99, 142, 145,
224, 256
Hamilton, William, 61, 125
Harcourt, Earl of, 168 ; and Lady, 255
Hardwicke, (2nd) Earl of, 61, 108, 256
Harlow, G. H., 60, 128
Harness, Rev. William, 219
Harris, Thomas, 138, 149, 231
Haydon, Benjamin, 190, 22O-2, 243,
278, 288
Hazlitt, William, 136, 170, 230, 266,
273, 278 ; quoted 66, 118, 130
Henderson, John, 34, 36, 39, 44, 49, 52,
57, 82, 91, 136, 179
Hereford, 2, 5, 10
Hill, Aaron, his Zara, 85
Hogg, James, 79
Holcroft, Thomas, 10, n, 254; quoted
26
Holland, Lord, 145, 256
Home, John, his Doiiglas, 91-2, no,
157, 182, 273
Hopkins, Priscilla, afterwards Kemble,
25, 30, 138, 141-2, 145-6, 234, 242
Hopkins, W., 30; Mrs., 126
Hunt, Leigh, 66, 89, 131, 136, 138, 175,
266 ; quoted 72
Inchbald, Elizabeth, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37,
64, 81, 135, 141, 151, 189, 212-3,
223,226,253, 256; Mr., 33, 34
Incledon, 260
Irving, Sir Henry, 72, 78, 117, 180
Irving, Mr. H. B., quoted 133
Irving, Washington, 136, 245, 264, 282
INDEX
295
fackson, John, in, 148
[ago, Rev. Richard, quoted 16
[ameson, Mrs., 120, 280, quoted 45, 278
[anin, Jules, quoted 57
[ekyll, Joseph, 219
[enkin, Prof. Fleeming, 120-1, quoted 73
("ersey, Lady, 250
Johnson, Samuel, 23, 94, 99-100, 119,
127-8, 211, 224, 229, 257
Jones, Frederic E., 109
Jordan, Dora, 79, 165, 172, 173-5
Kean, Charles, 139
Kean, Edmund, 34, 71, 136, 167, 178,
179, 180-1
Kelly, Michael, 158, 280
Kelly, Miss, 74
Kemble, Anne, afterwards Hatton, sister
of Mrs. Siddons, 154-5
Kemble, Charles, brother of Mrs.
Siddons, 4, 7, 58, 91, 133, 135, 144,
148-50, 158, 178, 181, 226, 230,
243, 278, 284, 286
Kemble, Elizabeth, afterwards Whitelock,
sister of Mrs. Siddons, 150-1, 153-4
Kemble, Fanny, niece of Mrs. Siddons,
8, 123, 135, 148, 150, 189, 191-2,
206, 217, 230, 247, 248, 269, 273,
278, 284, 287, 289; quoted 77, 117,
146, 152 ; cited 65
Kemble, Frances, afterwards Arkwright,
niece of Mrs. Siddons, 148, 195
Kemble, Frances, afterwards Twiss,
sister of Mrs. Siddons, 49, 95,
150-2, 176, 1 88, 280, 285
Kemble, Jane, afterwards Mason, sister
of Mrs. Siddons, 154
Kemble, Father John, 3, 4, 223
Kemble, John Mitchell, nephew of Mrs.
Siddons, 4, 137, 149-5°, 278
Kemble, John Philip, brother of Mrs.
Siddons, 3, 7, 8, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
59, 61, 63, 77, 78, 88, 91, 95, 97,
100, 102, 104, in, 115, note 120,
127, 133-46, 147, 151, 157, 160,
165, 166, 167, 172, 177, 178, 180,
181, 185, 193, 226, 229, 231-4, 241,
243, 259, 260, 263, 267, 268, 269,
270, 279
Kemble, Capt. Richard, 3, 4
Kemble, Roger, grandfather of Mrs.
Siddons, 4, 5
Kemble, Roger, father of Mrs. Siddons,
i, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 17, 54,
56, 133-4, 203, 204
Kemble, Sarah, afterwards Siddons :
birth and birthplace, 1-2
origins of Kemble family, 2
immediate ancestry, 3-5
Kemble, Sarah, afterwards Siddons —
continued
her parents, 3, 6-7
trained by her mother in careful utter-
ance, 8, 66
general education, 8-9
lifelong love of Milton, 9, 271-2
juvenile appearances, 2, 9-10
early maturity, 12
art slow in development, 12, 28
staidness and high principles, 12, 225
engagement to Siddons, 13-15
Guy's Cliffe interlude, 15-17
marriage and first appearance after, 17
good acting reported to Garrick, 18-19
engaged for Drury Lane, 20-22
birth of first two children, 21, 23
unsuccessful debut as Portia, 23
plays various parts with Garrick, 26
continued ill success, 26-30
animus against Garrick, 27, 28
lack of pliancy, 28, 100, 245-6, 283
dismissed from Drury Lane, 30
short provincial engagements, 31-35
engaged for Bath Theatre, 36
success and artistic development at
Bath, 37-8, 42, 49, 50
frightens herself over Macbeth, 39
methods, and industry, 41, 56-7, 182
originality, 41
gift for artistic identification of herself
with assumed characters, 41-2, 71,
93, H7
earlier period of pathetic tragedy, 42,
78, 229-30
"The Siddons 'Oh !'" 42, 175
first drawn by Lawrence, 45
warm friendship for Dr. and Mrs.
Whalley, 47
deficient in sense of humour, 47, 78, 80
engaged by Sheridan for Drury Lane, 50
triumphant second debut in London as
Isabella in Isabella, or The Fatal
Marriage, 52-6
generally best in wifely and motherly
parts, 55, 118
strong memory, 57
looks, 57-9, 214, 230, 269
as Margaret of Anjou in The Earl of
Warwick, 58, 165-6
portraits, 59-62, 118, 128, 252-4
queenliness, 62-3
power of agitating audiences, 65-6
Royal favours, 67, 249-50, 276
social homage, 68, 212, 224, 262
excellent appetite, 69, 243-4
early salary at Drury Lane, 68
at head of profession, 68-9
criticises John Kemble, 70 135
296
THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Kemble, Sarah, afterwards Siddons —
• continued
artistic sincerity and truthfulness, 70,
73> 74, 76
vitality of her acting, 72, 73, 117
power of vitalizing lifeless lines, 75
generally classic, idealistic style, 77, 169
later period of majestic tragedy, 78-9,
132, 229
inferiority in comedy, 79-80
as Belvidera in Venice Preserved, 82-3
as Monimia in The Orphan, 83-4
as Zara in The Mourning Bride, 84-5
as Jane Shore, 85-6
as Calista in The Fair Penitent, 86-7
as Euphrasia in The Grecian Daughter,
87-8
as Mrs. Beverley in The Gamester,
88-9
as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, 89, 158
as Lady Randolph in Douglas, 91-2
off the stage no actress, 93-4
first plays in Dublin, 95-7
Mrs. Crawford pitted against her, 91-2,
97
well received in Irish society, 98-9
jealousies and clouds dating from
Dublin second season, 100-9
wanting in readiness to give away
money, 107-8
an able letter-writer, 108, 208, 248
first appearance in Edinburgh and
later visits, 109-11
stars indefatigably, m-2
professional trustworthiness, 112
as Isabella in Measure for Measure,
II4-S
during earlier maturity, continuous
artistic improvement, 115
as Constance in King John, 116-8
power of self-excitation, 116
as Lady Macbeth, 118-23, 1 68, 266
as Desdemona, 123-4
as Rosalind, 124-5
as Portia again, 125-6
as Ophelia, 126
power of startling fellow-actors, 126
as Imogen, Cordelia, Cleopatra, 127
as Queen Katharine, 127-9
as Volumnia, 129-30
as Juliet, 131
as her last new character, Hermione,
131-2
preference for acting with Kemble, ,
134-5
leaves Drury Lane for Covent Garden,
140
stage mannerisms in private life, 142,
245, 247, 282
Kemble, Sarah, afterwards Siddons —
continued
deficient in high spirits, 154
as Elvira in Pizarro, 159-60
refuses to act unless Sheridan pays
arrears, 160
occasional colloquial realism in tragedy,
165-6
as Jane de Montfort in De Montforty
166-7
no serious rivals, 168
magnificent greenroom manner, 175-6
counsels to young Macready, 182
home life, 183
husband dies, 186-7
motherliness, 187-8
deep interest in Lawrence, 192, 194,
201, 203
character to some extent influenced by
profession, 95, 228-9
confesses acting a relief from sorrow,
197, 229, 274-5
power of inspiring profound affection
in daughter, 199
fortitude at younger daughter's death-
bed, 200, 230
while absent in Ireland, loses elder
daughter, 205
religious disposition, 215, 285-6
objects to being lionised, 220, 224, 258
prestige outlasts stage period, 221,
273-4, 281-2
gives evening parties, 223-240, 277-8
calumniated by Mrs. Galindo, 224-7
glamour of name, 230
courage in emergencies, 230-1
increasing stoutness, 231, 264-5
retires during O.P. riots, 233
salary at Covent Garden, 234
earnings, 234-6
London homes, 237-41, 276-7
practises modelling, 241
illnesses, 242-3
strong ejaculations, 245
seriousness and literalness, 247-8, 268
tribute in Burke's Reflections, 252
sensibility to music, 260
farewell performances, 265-7
public readings, 269-71
decay of power, 273
foreign trips, 280-1
friendly ways with children, 284
last illness and death, 286-7
Kennard, Mrs. A., 14
King, Thomas, 20, 23, 52, 53, 104, 105,
138, 139, 177
Knapp, Mr. Oswald G., 58
Knight, Joseph, 4
Kotzebue his Stranger, 89, 156-8, 207
INDEX
297
Lacy, Willoughby, 29
Lamb, Charles, 66, 136, 142, 160, 174,
212, 259
Landor, W. S., 138
Lansdowne, Lord, 70
Lewes, Charles Lee, 97, 106
Lewis, Matthew, his Castle Spectre, 91,
165
Lewis, William, 140, 178
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 8, 45, 54, 58,
59, 60, 61, 130, 134, 150, 158, 172,
185, 189-203, 212, 226, 228, 232,
233, 247, 249, 253, 263, 278
Lillo, his Fatal Curiosity ', 66 ; George
Barmvell, 72
Linley, 29
Liverpool, 18, 31,35, 112, 175, 235
Macaulay, quoted 44, 252
Macklin, 55, 178
Macready, 57, 62, 80, 89, 132, 137, 149,
170, 174, 181-2, 233, 273
Mair, Mrs., 138, 141, 202, 208, 209,
214, 216, 222, 240, 261, 278, 284;
Major, note 59
Malone, 6, 218
Manchester, 31, 33, 35. "2, 242
Mangin, Rev. E., 59, 122
Martin, Sir Theodore, 149
Mason, Rev. William, 255 ; his Elfrida,
1 66
Mathews, Charles, 178
Matthews, Prof. Brander, 153, 164
Mellon, Harriot, 175-6
Milton, 9, 15, 269, 271-2
Monckton, Hon. Mary, afterwards Lady
Cork, 142, 219, 246, 257-8, 261
Moody, John, 18, 19
Moore, Charles, 195, 202, 203, 222
Moore, Thomas, 244, 259-60, 274
More, Hannah, 167, 215
Morgan, Lady, 142-3, 255
Murphy, Arthur, 82, 87, 164 ; his Grecian
Daughter, 10, 45, 55, 57, 66, 69,
82, 87-8
Murray, Harriet, afterwards Siddons,
178, 203-4, 208, 209
Northcote, quoted 253
O'Neill, Miss, 166, 170-1, 259, 273
Opie, William, 214; Mrs., 188, 213-4,
218, 248, 262
Otway, Thomas, 82-3 ; his Venice Pre-
served, 19, 68, 69, 75, 82-3, 132,
135, 1 86 ; his Orphan, 83-4
Pacchierotti, 162
Packer, 56
Palmer, John, 34, 35-6, 37, 38, 5°. 57,
171
Papendiek, Mrs., 188
Pepys, Sir W. W., 272, 285
Pitt, William, 35, 164, 251
Powell, William. 13
Pratt, Samuel Jackson, 48-9, 67
Price, Rev. Thomas, I, 14, 222-3
Pritchard, Mrs., 76, I2O, 121, 126, 143,
1 68
Quin, 8, 1 68, 180
Rachel, 57, 7 1, 79, 179
Reynolds, Frederick, 75, 165
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 47, 56-7, 59, 63,
100, 118, 151, 174, 252-4, 261
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 66, 72, 126,
230, 264, 269, 280
Robinson, ' Perdita,' 176
Romney, George, 60, 61, 253
Rosebery, Lord, quoted 40
Rowe, Nathaniel, 82 ; his fane Shore,
23, 69, 85-6; his Fair Penitent,
69, 73, 74, 86-7, 173 5 his Tamer-
lane, 74, 82
Russell, Samuel, 58
Russell, Dr. W., quoted 52
Satchell, Elizabeth, afterwards Kemble,
133, 147-8
Scott, Sir Walter, 70, 81, 83, no, in,
134, 136, 137, 143-4, 165, 167,
185, 208, 243, 248, 250, 252, 259,
261-2, 264, 273
Seguin, Peter, 96-7
Seward, Ann*. 47, 49, 70, 82, 87, 126,
215-6, 244, 291
Shakespeare, 25, 54, 74, 76, 86, 114-
32, 137, 139, 145, 248
Sharp, 'Conversation,' 15, 258, 284
Shaw, Rev. Stebbing, quoted n
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 29, 49, 50,
2, 78, 121, 137, 139, 140-2, 156-
225, 252 ; his ' Monody on
Garrick,' 42 and note.
Sheridan, Thomas, 37, 41, 52, 55, 151
Sherry, Miss, 25
Siddons, Cecilia, afterwards Combe,
daughter of Mrs. Siddons, note 145,
181, 185, 188, 203, 206, 239, 271,
275, 279, 280, 281, 287, 290
Siddons, George, son of Mrs. Siddons,
58, 152-3, 187-8, 203, 204, 206,
209, 250, 273, 278-9, 288, 290
Siddons, Henry, son of Mrs. Siddons,
21, 22, 42, 50, 53, 108, in, 148,
179, 187-8, 193, 204, 206-8, 209,
242, 285, 290
52,
64,
298
THE INCOMPARABLE SIDDONS
Siddons, Maria, daughter of Mrs. Siddons,
38, 50, 187-201, 242, 243, 290-1
Siddons, Sally, daughter of Mrs. Siddons,
23, 42, 50, 112, 158, 161, 185, 187-
205, 236, 243, 278, 290-1
Siddons, William, husband of Mrs.
Siddons, n, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, 29, 30, 32, 37, 42-3,
49, 56, 95. ioo, 103, 160, 177,
183-7, 195, 203, 204-5, 214, 236-7,
239-40, 242, 290
Smart, Sir George, 272, 282-3
Smith, 'Gentleman,' 13, 25, 134
Smith, James, 161
Smith, Sarah, afterwards Bartley, 169-
70
Smith, Rev. Sydney, 218-9, 245> 25^
Southerne, Thomas, 82 ; his Isabella, 52,
54-5, 69, 76, 96, 115, 132, 259
Stael, Mme de, 143, quoted 71, 85
Steevens, 'Shakespeare,' 107, 151, 218
Stothard, 61, 62, 247, 289
Stratford-upon-Avon, 6, 25
Talma, 143, 145, 170
Taylor, John, 28, 137, 147, 177
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 132, 137, 149 ;
quoted 139, 181
Terry, Miss Ellen, 88 ; quoted 80
Thackeray, 99, 157, 176; quoted 8
Thomson, James, his Edward and
Eleanora^ 42
Thrale, Mrs, afterwards Piozzi, 37, 57,
162, 172, 196, 21 1-2, 237,242, 243,
247, 270, 271, 273, 279
Tickell, Mrs., 165-6, 175
Tieck, 145
Trench, Mrs., 75, 170-1, 180, 263
Twiss, Francis, 98, 151-2
Twiss, Horace, nephew of Mrs. Siddons,
152-3, 217, 227, 240-1, 248, 260,
265, 267, 269, 278
'Tytler, Sarah,' quoted 32
Walpole, Horace, 27, 59, 67, 79, note 82,
94, no, 125, 172, 250, 255, 256, 257
Ward, John, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons,
6, 7
Ward, Sarah, afterwards Kemble, mother
of Mrs. Siddons, I, 2, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14
Wellington, Duke of, 80
Wells, ' Becky,' 1 8, 171
Welsh, Thomas, 53
Weston, Miss, afterwards Pennington, 50,
151, 195, 197-201, 243, 285
Whalley, Rev. Dr., 36, 46-8, 49, 50,
56, 67, 187, 206, 220, 291 ; his Castle
of Montval, 90-1
Whitelock, Charles Edward, 153
Wilkinson, Patty, 17, 203, 204,205, 227,
238, 239, 248, 257, 276, 279, 287, 291
Wilkinson, Tate, 32, 33, 173, 250 ; quoted
62, 112
Wilson, John, quoted 59, 123, note 129,
164, 267, 281
Windham, William, 118, 124, 184, 224,
248, 252
Woffington, Peg, 7, 130
Worcester, 7, 8, 9, 10, n, 20
Wynn, Miss Williams, 15, 65, 77, 86,
120, 273
Yates, Mrs., 25, 27, 28, 41, 253
York, 32, 33, 34, 35, 112, 173
Young, Charles Mayne, 145, 179, 181,
243 ; quoted 71, 73, 134, 130-1
Younge, Miss, 25, 27, 28, 41
Younger, Joseph, 1 8, 31, 32, 33, 172
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