RAMBLES FROM THE LAKES: MRS. SIDDONS AND HANNAH MORE[184]
[184] From _Tait's Magazine_ for August 1840.--M.
From the Lakes, as I have mentioned before, I went annually
southwards--chiefly to Somersetshire or to London, and more rarely
to Edinburgh. In my Somersetshire visits, I never failed to see Mrs.
Hannah More. My own relative's house, in fact, standing within one
mile of Barley Wood,[185] I seldom suffered a week to pass without
calling to pay my respects. There was a stronger motive to this than
simply what arose from Mrs. H. More's company, or even from that of
her sisters (one or two of whom were more entertaining, because more
filled with animal spirits and less thoughtful, than Mrs. Hannah);
for it rarely happened that one called within the privileged calling
hours,--which, with these rural ladies, ranged between twelve and
four o'clock,--but one met some person interesting by rank, station,
political or literary eminence.
[185] Hannah More's residence.--M.
Here, accordingly, it was that, during one of my last visits to
Somersetshire, either in 1813 or 1814, I met Mrs. Siddons, whom I had
often seen upon the stage, but never before in private society.[186]
She had come into this part of the country chiefly, I should imagine,
with a view to the medical advice at the Bristol Hot Wells and Clifton;
for it happened that one of her daughters--a fine interesting young
woman--was suffering under pulmonary consumption--that scourge of the
British youth; of which malady, I believe, she ultimately died. From
the Hot Wells, Mrs. Siddons had been persuaded to honour with her
company a certain Dr. Wh----, whose splendid villa of Mendip Lodge
stood about two miles from Barley Wood.
[186] At the time mentioned Hannah More was verging on her
seventieth year and Mrs. Siddons on her sixtieth.--M.
This villa, by the way, was a show place, in which a vast deal of money
had been sunk upon two follies equally unproductive of pleasure to the
beholder and of anything approaching a pecuniary compensation to the
owner. The villa, with its embellishments, was supposed to have cost
at least sixty thousand pounds; of which one-half had been absorbed,
partly by a contest with the natural obstacles of the situation, and
partly by the frailest of all ornaments--vast china jars, vases, and
other "knicknackery" baubles, which held their very existence by so
frail a tenure as the carefulness of a housemaid, and which, at all
events, if they should survive the accidents of life, never are known
to reproduce to the possessor one-tenth part of what they have cost.
Out of doors there were terraces of a mile long, one rising above
another, and carried, by mere artifice of mechanic skill, along the
perpendicular face of a lofty rock. Had they, when finished, any
particular beauty? Not at all. Considered as a pleasure ground, they
formed a far less delightful landscape, and a far less alluring haunt
to rambling steps, than most of the uncostly shrubberies which were
seen below, in unpretending situations, and upon the ordinary level
of the vale. What a record of human imbecility! For all his pains
and his expense in forming this costly "folly," his reward was daily
anxiety, and one solitary _bon mot_ which he used to record of some
man who, on being asked by the Rev. Doctor what he thought of his
place, replied that "he thought the Devil had tempted him up to an
exceedingly high place." No part of the grounds, nor the house itself,
was at all the better because originally it had been, beyond measure,
difficult to form it: so difficult that, according to Dr. Johnson's
witty remark on another occasion, there was good reason for wishing
that it had been impossible. The owner, whom I knew, most certainly
never enjoyed a happy day in this costly creation; which, after all,
displayed but little taste, though a gorgeous array of finery. The
show part of the house was itself a monument to the barrenness of
invention in him who planned it; consisting, as it did, of one long
suite of rooms in a straight line, without variety, without obvious
parts, and therefore without symmetry or proportions. This long vista
was so managed that, by means of folding-doors, the whole could be seen
at a glance, whilst its extent was magnified by a vast mirror at the
further end. The Doctor was a querulous old man, enormously tall and
enormously bilious; so that he had a spectral appearance when pacing
through the false gaieties of his glittering villa. He was a man of
letters, and had known Dr. Johnson, whom he admired prodigiously; and
had himself been, in earlier days, the author of a poem now forgotten.
He belonged, at one period, to the coterie of Miss Seward, Dr. Darwin,
Day, Mr. Edgeworth, &c.; consequently he might have been an agreeable
companion, having so much anecdote at his command: but his extreme
biliousness made him irritable in a painful degree and impatient of
contradiction--impatient even of dissent in the most moderate shape.
The latter stage of his life is worth recording, as a melancholy
comment upon the blindness of human foresight, and in some degree also
as a lesson on the disappointments which follow any departure from high
principle, and the deception which seldom fails to lie in ambush for
the deceiver. I had one day taken the liberty to ask him why, and with
what ultimate purpose, he, who did not like trouble and anxiety, had
embarrassed himself with the planning and construction of a villa that
manifestly embittered his days? "That is, my young friend," replied the
doctor, "speaking plainly, you mean to express your wonder that I, so
old a man (for he was then not far from seventy), should spend my time
in creating a show-box. Well now, I will tell you: precisely because
I _am_ old. I am naturally of a gloomy turn; and it has always struck
me that we English, who are constitutionally haunted by melancholy,
are too apt to encourage it by the gloomy air of the mansions we
inhabit. Your fortunate age, my friend, can dispense with such aids:
ours requires continual influxes of pleasure through the senses, in
order to cheat the stealthy advances of old age, and to beguile us
of our sadness. Gaiety, the _riant_ style in everything, that is what
we old men need. And I, who do not love the pains of creating, love
the creation; and, in fact, require it as part of my artillery against
time." Such was the amount of his explanation: and now, in a few words,
for his subsequent history.
Finding himself involved in difficulties by the expenses of this villa,
going on concurrently with a large London establishment, he looked
out for a good marriage (being a widower) as the sole means within
his reach for clearing off his embarrassments without proportionable
curtailment of his expenses. It happened, unhappily for both parties,
that he fell in with a widow lady, who was cruising about the world
with precisely the same views, and in precisely the same difficulties.
Each (or the friends of each) held out a false flag, magnifying
their incomes respectively, and sinking the embarrassments. Mutually
deceived, they married: and one change immediately introduced at the
splendid villa was the occupation of an entire wing by a lunatic
brother of the lady's; the care of whom, with a large allowance, had
been committed to her by the Court of Chancery. This, of itself,
shed a gloom over the place which defeated the primary purpose of
the doctor (as explained by himself) in erecting it. Windows barred,
maniacal howls, gloomy attendants from a lunatic hospital ranging
about: these were sad disturbances to the doctor's rose-leaf system of
life. This, however, if it were a nuisance, brought along with it some
_solatium_, as the lawyers express it, in the shape of the Chancery
allowance. But next came the load of debts for which there was no
_solatium_, and which turned out to be the only sort of possession
with which the lady was well endowed. The disconsolate doctor--an old
man, and a clergyman of the Establishment--could not resort to such
redress as a layman might have adopted: he was obliged to give up all
his establishments; his gay villa was offered to Queen Caroline, who
would, perhaps, have bought it, but that _her_ final troubles in this
world were also besetting her about that very time. For the present,
therefore, the villa was shut up, and "left alone with its glory."
The reverend and aged proprietor, now ten times more bilious and more
querulous than ever, shipped himself off for France; and there, in one
of the southern provinces--so far, therefore, as climate was concerned,
realizing his vision of gaiety, but for all else the most melancholy
of exiles--sick of the world and of himself, hating to live, yet more
intensely hating to die, in a short time the unhappy old man breathed
his last, in a common lodging house, gloomy and vulgar, and in all
things the very antithesis to that splendid abode which he had planned
for the consolation of his melancholy, and for the gay beguilement of
old age.
At this gentleman's villa Mrs. Siddons had been paying a visit; for
the doctor was a worshipper, in a servile degree, of all things which
flourished in the sunshine of the world's applause. To have been the
idolized favourite of nations, to have been an honoured and even a
privileged[187] guest at Windsor, that was enough for him; and he did
his utmost to do the honours of his neighbourhood, not less to glorify
himself in the eye of the country, who was fortunate enough to have
such a guest, than to show his respect for the distinguished visitor.
Mrs. Siddons felt herself flattered by the worthy doctor's splendid
hospitalities; for that they were really splendid may be judged by
this fact, communicated to me by Hannah More, viz. that the Bishop of
London (Porteus), when on a visit to Barley Wood, being much pressed by
the doctor to visit him, had at length accepted a dinner invitation.
Mrs. Hannah More was, of course, included in the invitation, but had
found it impossible to attend, from ill health; and the next morning,
at breakfast, the bishop had assured her that, in all his London
experience, in that city of magnificent dinners beyond all other
cities of the earth, and amongst the princes of the land, he had never
witnessed an entertainment so perfect in its appointments.
[187] A _privileged_ guest at Windsor. Mrs. Siddons used to
mention that, when she was invited to Windsor Castle for the
purpose of reading before the Queen and her royal daughters, on
her first visit she was ready to sink from weariness under the
effort of standing for so long a time; but on some subsequent
visit I have understood that she was allowed to sit, probably on
the suggestion of one of the younger ladies.
Gratified as she was, however, by her host's homage, as expressed in
his splendid style of entertaining, Mrs. Siddons was evidently more
happy in her residence at Barley Wood. The style of conversation
pleased her. It was religious: but Mrs. Siddons was herself religious;
and at that moment, when waiting with anxiety upon a daughter whose
languor seemed but too ominous in her maternal eyes, she was more than
usually open to religious impressions, and predisposed to religious
topics. Certain I am, however, from what I then observed, that Mrs.
Siddons, in common with many women of rank who were on the list of
the Barley Wood visitors, did not apprehend, in their full sense and
severity, the peculiar principles of Hannah More. This lady, excellent
as she was, and incapable of practising any studied deceit, had,
however, an instinct of worldly wisdom, which taught her to refrain
from shocking ears polite with too harsh or too broad an exposure
of all which she believed. This, at least, if it were any duty of
hers, she considered, perhaps, as already fulfilled by her writings;
and, moreover, the very tone of good breeding which she had derived
from the good company she had kept made her feel the impropriety of
lecturing her visitors even when she must have thought them in error.
Mrs. Siddons obviously thought Hannah More a person who differed from
the world chiefly by applying a greater energy, and sincerity, and
zeal, to a system of religious truth equally known to all. Repentance,
for instance--all people hold that to be a duty; and Mrs. Hannah More
differed from them only by holding it to be a duty of all hours, a
duty for youth not less than for age. But how much would she have been
shocked to hear that Mrs. Hannah More held all repentance, however
indispensable, yet in itself, and though followed by the sincerest
efforts at reformation of life, to be utterly unavailing as any
operative part of the means by which man gains acceptance with God. To
rely upon repentance, or upon anything that man can do for himself,
that Mrs. Hannah More considered as the mortal taint, as the [Greek:
prôton pseudos], in the worldly theories of the Christian scheme; and I
have heard the two ladies--Mrs. More and Mrs. Siddons, I mean--talking
by the hour together, as completely at cross purposes as it is possible
to imagine. Everything in fact of what was special in the creed
adopted by Mrs. Hannah More, by Wilberforce, and many others known as
Evangelical Christians, is always capable, in lax conversation, of
being translated into a vague general sense, which completely obscures
the true limitations of the meaning.
Mrs. Hannah More, however, was too polished a woman to allow of
any sectarian movement being impressed upon the conversation;
consequently, she soon directed it to literature, upon which Mrs.
Siddons was very amusing, from her recollections of Dr. Johnson, whose
fine-turned compliment to herself (so much in the spirit of those
unique compliments addressed to eminent people by Louis XIV) had for
ever planted the Doctor's memory in her heart.[188] She spoke also of
Garrick and of Mrs. Garrick; but not, I think, with so much respect and
affection as Mrs. Hannah More, who had, in her youthful days, received
the most friendly attentions from both, though coming forward at that
time in no higher character than as the author of _Percy_, the most
insipid of tragedies.[189]
[188] It was in 1783, the last year but one of Dr. Johnson's life,
that Mrs. Siddons, then twenty-eight years of age, and already the
most famous actress of her day, visited Johnson in his rooms in
Bolt Court, Fleet Street. "When Mrs. Siddons came into the room,
there happened to be no chair ready for her, which he observing,
said with a smile, 'Madam, you who so often occasion a want of
seats to other people will the more easily excuse the want of one
yourself.'" So Boswell reports.--M.
[189] Published in 1777.--M.
Mrs. Siddons was prevailed on to read passages from both Shakspere
and Milton. The dramatic readings were delightful; in fact, they were
almost stage rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate gesticulation.
One was the great somnambulist scene in _Macbeth_, which was the _ne
plus ultra_ in the whole range of Mrs. Siddons's scenical exhibitions,
and can never be forgotten by any man who once had the happiness to
witness that immortal performance of the divine artist. Another,
given at the request of a Dutch lady residing in the neighbourhood of
Barley Wood, was the scene from _King John_ of the Lady Constance,
beginning--"Gone to be married! gone to swear a peace!" &c. The last,
and truly superb for the musical intonation of the cadences, was that
inimitable apology or pleading of Christian charity for Cardinal
Wolsey, addressed to his bitterest enemy, Queen Catherine. All these,
in different degrees and different ways, were exquisite. But the
readings from Milton were not to my taste. And, some weeks after, when,
at Mrs. Hannah More's request, I had read to her some of Lord Byron's
most popular works, I got her to acknowledge, in then speaking upon the
subject of reading, that perhaps the style of Mrs. Siddons's reading
had been too much determined to the dramatic cast of emphasis, and the
pointed expression of character and situation which must always belong
to a speaker bearing a part in a dialogue, to admit of her assuming the
tone of a rapt poetic inspiration.
Meantime, whatever she did--whether it were in display of her own
matchless talents, but always at the earnest request of the company
or of her hostess, or whether it were in gentle acquiescent attention
to the display made by others, or whether it were as one member of a
general party taking her part occasionally for the amusement of the
rest and contributing to the general fund of social pleasure--nothing
could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs.
Siddons. She had retired from the stage,[190] and no longer regarded
herself as a public character.[191] But so much the stronger did she
seem to think the claims of her friends upon anything she could do for
their amusement.
[190] I saw her, however, myself upon the stage twice after this
meeting at Barley Wood. It was at Edinburgh; and the parts were
those of Lady Macbeth and Lady Randolph. But she then performed
only as an expression of kindness to her grandchildren. Professor
Wilson and myself saw her on the occasion from the stage-box, with
a delight embittered by the certainty that we saw her for the last
time.
[191] Her farewell to the stage had been on the 29th of June 1812
in the character of Lady Macbeth.--M.
Meantime, amongst the many pleasurable impressions which Mrs. Siddons's
presence never failed to make, there was one which was positively
painful and humiliating: it was the degradation which it inflicted
upon other women. One day there was a large dinner party at Barley
Wood: Mrs. Siddons was present; and I remarked to a gentleman who sat
next to me--a remark which he heartily confirmed--that, upon rising
to let the ladies leave us, Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity of
her regal deportment, dwarfed the whole party, and made them look
ridiculous; though Mrs. H. More, and others of the ladies present,
were otherwise really women of very pleasing appearance. One final
remark is forced upon me by my recollections of Mrs. Jordan, and of
her most unhappy end: it is this; and strange enough it seems:--that
the child of laughter and comic mirth, whose laugh itself thrilled
the heart with pleasure, and who created gaiety of the noblest order
for one entire generation of her countrymen, died prematurely, and in
exile, and in affliction which really killed her by its own stings.
If ever woman died of a broken heart, of tenderness bereaved, and of
hope deferred, that woman was Mrs. Jordan.[192] On the other hand, this
sad votary of Melpomene, the queen of the tragic stage, died full of
years and honours, in the bosom of her admiring country, in the centre
of idolizing friends, and happy in all things except this, that some
of those whom she most loved on earth had gone before her. Strange
contrariety of lots for the two transcendent daughters of the comic and
tragic muses. For my own part, I shall always regard my recollections
of Mrs. Siddons as those in which chiefly I have an advantage over
the coming generation; nay, perhaps over all generations; for many
centuries may revolve without producing such another transcendent
creature.
[192] Mrs. Jordan died in 1816, at the age of 54; Mrs. Siddons in
1831, at the age of 76. Hannah More outlived both, dying in 1833,
at the age of 88.--M.
END OF VOL. II
_In Four Volumes, large crown 8vo, Art Canvas binding, price 6s. each._
THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN
DON QUIXOTE
OF LA MANCHA
BY
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA
DONE INTO ENGLISH BY
HENRY EDWARD WATTS
_A NEW EDITION_
_With Notes Original and Selected._
_In One Volume, uniform with the above Edition of DON QUIXOTE,
price 7s. 6d._
A NEW AND GREATLY ENLARGED
LIFE OF CERVANTES
BY
HENRY EDWARD WATTS
The above Life has been wholly recast and almost entirely rewritten,
and contains an autogravure frontispiece of an interesting and original
portrait, reproduced from an exact copy of the bust of the figure
believed to represent Cervantes in Pacheco's picture at Seville.
LONDON: A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE.
Standard Edition of the Waverley Novels
[Illustration: Per 2/6 Volume]
Complete in 25 Volumes, Crown 8vo, bound in Art Canvas, Gilt top,
containing Photogravure Frontispieces printed on Japanese Paper.
_Also to be had in full limp leather, gilt edges, price 3s. 6d. per
volume._
Sets, cloth ... Price £3:2:6.
_Sets can also be had in various leather bindings. Prices upon
application._
=1. Waverley; or, "'Tis Sixty Years Since."=
=2. Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer.=
=3. The Antiquary.=
=4. Rob Roy.=
=5. A Legend of Montrose, and The Black Dwarf.=
=6. Old Mortality.=
=7. The Heart of Mid-Lothian.=
=8. The Bride of Lammermoor.=
=9. Ivanhoe: A Romance.=
=10. The Monastery.=
=11. The Abbot: A Sequel.=
=12. Kenilworth.=
=13. The Pirate.=
=14. The Fortunes of Nigel.=
=15. Peveril of the Peak.=
=16. Quentin Durward.=
=17. St. Ronan's Well.=
=18. Redgauntlet.=
=19. The Betrothed, and The Highland Widow.=
=20. The Talisman: A Tale of the Crusaders.=
=21. Woodstock; or, The Cavalier.=
=22. The Fair Maid of Perth; or, St. Valentine's Day.=
=23. Anne of Geierstein; or, The Maiden of the Mist.=
=24. Count Robert of Paris.=
=25. The Surgeon's Daughter, and Castle Dangerous.=
_The above Volumes contain all the Author's Introductions and Notes,
as well as the Copyright Annotations of the late DAVID LAING, LL.D. A
Glossary and Index are also appended to each._
LONDON: A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE