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VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME AND ABROAD.
VOL. III.
VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME AND ABROAD
WITH TALES AND MISCELLANIES NOW FIRST COLLECTED.
BY MRS. JAMESON,
AUTHOR OF "THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN," "LIVES OF CELEBRATED FEMALE
SOVEREIGNS," &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1835.
LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
PAGE
Sketch of Mrs. Siddons 3
Sketch of Fanny Kemble 49
The False One 93
Halloran the Pedlar 177
The Indian Mother 231
Much Coin, Much Care 263
VOL. III.
Page 42, line 5, _for_ the full stop _read_ a comma, and _for_ she had
_read_ having.
59,--4, _for_ cannot _read_ could not.
MRS. SIDDONS.
[The following little sketch was written a few days after the death of
Mrs. Siddons, and was called forth by certain paragraphs which appeared
in the daily papers. A misapprehension of the real character of this
remarkable woman, which I know to exist in the minds of many who admired
and venerated her talents, has induced me to enlarge the first very
slight sketch, into a more finished but still inadequate portrait.
I have spared no pains to verify the truth of my own conception by
testimony of every kind that was attainable. I have penned every word as
if I had been in that great final court where the thoughts of all hearts
are manifested; and those who best knew the individual I have attempted
to delineate bear witness to the fidelity of the portrait, as far as it
goes. I must be permitted to add, that in this and the succeeding sketch
I have not only been inspired by the wish to do justice to individual
virtue and talent,--I wished to impress and illustrate that important
truth, that a gifted woman may pursue a public vocation, yet preserve
the purity and maintain the dignity of her sex--that there is no
prejudice which will not shrink away before moral energy, and no
profession which may not be made compatible with the respect due to us
as women, the cultivation of every feminine virtue, and the practice of
every private duty. I might here multiply examples and exceptions, and
discuss causes and results; but it is a consideration I reserve for
another opportunity.]
MRS. SIDDONS
"_Implora pace!_"--She, who upon earth ruled the souls and senses
of men, as the moon rules the surge of waters; the acknowledged and
liege empress of all the realms of illusion; the crowned queen; the
throned muse; the sceptred shadow of departed genius, majesty, and
beauty,--supplicates--_Peace!_
What unhallowed work has been going forward in some of the daily
papers since this illustrious creature has been laid in her quiet
unostentatious grave! ay, even before her poor remains were cold!
What pains have been taken to cater trifling scandal for the blind,
heartless, gossip-loving vulgar! and to throw round the memory of a
woman, whose private life was as irreproachable as her public career was
glorious, some ridiculous or unamiable association which should tend to
unsphere her from her throne in our imagination, and degrade from her
towering pride of place, the heroine of Shakspeare, and the Muse of
Tragedy!
That stupid malignity which revels in the martyrdom of fame--which
rejoices when, by some approximation of the mean and ludicrous with the
beautiful and sublime, it can for a moment bring down the rainbow-like
glory in which the fancy invests genius, to the drab-coloured level of
mediocrity--is always hateful and contemptible; but in the present case
it is something worse; it has a peculiar degree of _cowardly_ injustice.
If some elegant biographer inform us that the same hand which painted
the infant Hercules, or Ugolino, or Mrs. Sheridan, half seraph and half
saint--could clutch a guinea with satisfaction, or drive a bargain with
a footman; if some discreet friend, from the mere love of truth, no
doubt, reveal to us the puerile, lamentable frailties of that bright
spirit which poured itself forth in torrents of song and passion: what
then? 'tis pitiful, certainly, wondrous pitiful; but there is no great
harm done,--no irremediable injury inflicted; for there stand their
works: the poet's immortal page, the painter's breathing canvass witness
for them. "Death hath had no power yet upon _their_ beauty"--over them
scandal cannot draw her cold slimy finger;--on _them_ calumny cannot
breathe her mildew; nor envy wither _them_ with a blast from hell. There
they stand for ever to confute injustice, to rectify error, to defy
malice; to silence, and long outlive the sneer, the lie, the jest, the
reproach. But _she_--who was of painters the model, the wonder, the
despair;--she, who realised in her own presence and person the poet's
divinest dreams and noblest creations;--she, who has enriched our
language with a new epithet, and made the word _Siddonian_ synonymous
with all we can imagine of feminine grace and grandeur: she has left
nothing behind her, but the memory of a great name: she has bequeathed
it to our reverence, our gratitude, our charity, and our sympathy; and
if it is not to be sacred, I know not what is--or ever will be.
Mrs. Siddons, as an _artist_, presented a singular example of the union
of all the faculties, mental and physical, which constitute excellence
in her art, directed to the end for which they seemed created. In any
other situation or profession, some one or other of her splendid gifts
would have been misplaced or dormant. It was her especial good fortune,
and not less that of the time in which she lived, that this wonderful
combination of mental powers and external graces, was fully and
completely developed by the circumstances in which she was placed.[1]
"With the most commanding beauty of face and form, and varied grace
of action; with the most noble combination of features, and extensive
capability of expression in each of them; with an unequalled genius
for her art, the utmost patience in study, and the strongest ardour of
feeling; there was not a passion which she could not delineate; not
the nicest shade, not the most delicate modification of passion, which
she could not seize with philosophical accuracy, and render with such
immediate force of nature and truth, as well as precision, that what
was the result of profound study and unwearied practice, appeared like
sudden inspiration. There was not a height of grandeur to which she
could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend;
not a chord of feeling, from the sternest to the most delicate, which
she could not cause to vibrate at her will. She had reached that point
of perfection in art, where it ceases to be art, and becomes a second
nature. She had studied most profoundly the powers and capabilities of
language; so that the most critical sagacity could not have suggested a
delicacy of emphasis, by which the meaning of the author might be more
distinctly conveyed, or a shade of intonation by which the sentiment
could be more fully, or more faithfully expressed. While other performers
of the past or present time, have made approaches to excellence, or
attained it now and then, Mrs. Siddons alone was pronounced faultless;
and, in _her_, the last generation witnessed what we shall not see in
ours;--no, nor our children after us;--that amazing union of splendid
intellectual powers, with unequalled charms of person, which, in the
tragic department of her art, realized the idea of perfection."
Such was the magnificent portrait drawn of Mrs. Siddons twenty years
ago; and it will be admitted by those who remember her, and must be
believed by those who do not, that in this case, eulogy could not wander
into exaggeration, nor enthusiasm be exalted beyond the bounds of truth.
I have heard people most unreasonably surprised or displeased, because
this exceeding dignity of demeanour was not confined to the stage, but
was carried into private life. Had it been merely conventional,--a thing
put on and put off,--it might have been so; but the grandeur of her
mind, and the light of her glorious beauty, were not as a diadem and
robe for state occasions only; her's was not only dignity of manner
and person, it was moral and innate, and, I may add, hereditary. Mrs.
Siddons, with all her graces of form and feature, her magnificence of
deportment, her deep-toned, measured voice, and impressive enunciation,
was in reality a softened reflection of her more stern, stately,
majestic mother, whose genuine loftiness of spirit and of bearing, whose
rare beauty, and imperious despotism of character, have often been
described to me as absolutely awful,--even her children trembled in her
presence.
"All the Kembles," said Sir Thomas Lawrence, "have historical faces;"
and for several generations their minds seem to have been cast in a
poetical mould. It has, however, been disputed, whether Mrs. Siddons
possessed genius. Whether genius be exclusively defined as the creative
and inventive faculty of the soul, or taken, in its usual acceptation,
as "a mind of large general faculties, accidentally determined to some
particular direction," I think she did possess it in both senses. The
grand characteristic of her mind was power, but it was power of a very
peculiar kind: it was slowly roused--slowly developed--not easily moved;
her perceptions were not rapid, nor her sensations quick; she required
time for every thing,--time to think, time to comprehend, time to speak.
There was nothing superficial about her; no vivacity of manner; to petty
gossip she would not descend, and evil-speaking she abhorred; she cared
not to shine in general conversation. Like some majestic "Argosie,"
bearing freight of precious metal, she was a-ground and cumbrous and
motionless among the shallows of common life; but set her upon the deep
waters of poetry and passion--there was her element--there was her
reign. Ask her an opinion, she could not give it you till she had looked
on the subject, and considered it on every side,--then you might trust
to it without appeal. Her powers, though not easily put in motion, were
directed by an incredible energy; her mind, when called to action,
seemed to rear itself up like a great wave of the sea, and roll forwards
with an irresistible force. This prodigious intellectual power was one
of her chief characteristics. Another was _truth_, which in the human
mind is generally allied with power. It is, I think, a mistaken idea,
that habits of impersonation on the stage tend to impair the sincerity
or the individuality of a character. If any injury is done in this
way, it is by the continual and strong excitement of the vanity, the
dependence on applause, which in time _may_ certainly corrode away the
integrity of the manner, if not of the mind. It is difficult for an
admired actress not to be vain, and difficult for a very vain person to
be quite unaffected, on or off the stage; it is, however, certain that
some of the truest, most natural persons I ever met with in my life,
were actresses. In the character of Mrs. Siddons, truth, and a reverence
for truth, were commensurate with her vast power: Heaven is not
farther removed from earth than she was from falsehood. Allied to this
conscientious turn was her love of order. She was extremely punctual
in all her arrangements; methodical and exact in every thing she did;
circumstantial and accurate in all she said. In little and in great
things, in the very texture and constitution of her mind, she was
integrity itself: "It was," (said one of her most intimate friends,)
"a mind far above the average standard, not only in ability, but in moral
and religious qualities; that these should have exhausted themselves in
the world of fiction, may be regretted in reference to her individual
happiness, but she certainly exercised, during her _reign_, a most
powerful moral influence:--she excited the nobler feelings and higher
faculties of every mind which came in contact with her own. I speak with
the deepest sense of personal obligation: it was at a very early age
that she repeated to me, in a manner and tone which left an indelible
impression,
'Sincerity,
Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave
Thy onward path,' &c.
and I never knew her to omit an opportunity of making her fine genius
minister to piety and virtue." Now what are the bravos of a whole
theatre,
"When all the thunder of the pit ascends,"
compared to such praise as this?
"Her mind" (again I am enabled to give the very words of one who knew
her well) "was a perfect mirror of the sublime and beautiful; like
a lake that reflected only the heavens above, or the summits of the
mountains around, nothing below a certain level could appear in it.
The ideal was her vital air. She breathed with difficulty in the
atmosphere of this 'working-day world,' and withdrew from it as much as
possible. Hence her moral principles were seldom brought to bear upon
the actual and ordinary concerns of life. She was rather the associate
of 'the mighty dead,' than the fellow-creature of the living. To the
latter she was known chiefly through others, and often through those who
were incapable of reflecting her qualities faithfully, though impressed
with the utmost veneration for her genius. In their very anxiety for
what they considered her interests, (and of her worldly interests
she took _no charge_,) they would in her name authorize prudential
arrangements, which gave rise to the suspicion of covetousness, whilst
she was sitting rapt in heavenly contemplation. Had she given her mind
to the consideration and investigation of relative claims, she might
on some occasions have acted differently--or, rather, _she_ would have
acted where in fact _others only_ acted: for never, as I have reason
to believe, was a case of distress _presented to her_ without her being
ready to give even till her 'hand lacked means.' Many of the poor in her
neighbourhood were pensioned by her.
"She was credulous--simple--to an extraordinary degree. Profession
had, therefore, too much weight with her. She was accustomed to
_manifestations_ of the sentiments she excited, and in seeking the
demonstration sometimes overlooked the silent reality;--this was a
consequence of her profession.
"She was not only exact in the performance of her religious duties; her
religion was a pervading sentiment, influencing her to the strictest
observance of truth and charity--I mean charity in judging others: the
very active and excursive benevolence which
'_Seeks_ the duty, nay, _prevents_ the need,'
would have been incompatible with her toilsome engrossing avocations
and with the visionary tendencies of her character. But the visionary
has his own sphere of action, and can often touch the master-springs of
other minds, so as to give the first impulse to the good deeds flowing
from _them_. There are some who can trace back to the sympathies which
Mrs. Siddons awakened, their devotedness to the cause of the suffering
and oppressed. Faithfully did she perform the part in life which she
believed allotted to her; and who may presume to judge that she did not
choose the better part?"
The idea that she was a cold woman is eminently false. Her affections,
like her intellectual powers, were slow, but tenacious; they enveloped
in folds, strong as flesh and blood, those whom she had found worthy and
taken to her heart; and her happiness was more entwined with them than
those who knew her only in her professional character could have supposed;
she would return home from the theatre, every nerve thrilling with the
excitement of sympathy, and applause, and admiration, and a cold look
or word from her husband has sent her to bed in tears. She had that
sure indication of a good heart and a fine mind, an exceeding love for
children, and a power to attract and amuse them. It was remarked that
her voice always softened in addressing a child. I remember a letter of
her's relative to a young mother and her infant, in which, among other
tender and playful things, she says, "I wonder whether Lady N---- is as
good a talker of baby-nonsense as I flatter myself _I_ am!" A lady who
was intimate with her, happening to enter her bedroom early one morning,
found her with two of her little grand-children romping on her bed, and
playing with the tresses of her long dark hair, which she had let down
for their amusement. Her own children adored her; her surviving friends
refer to her with tenderness, with gratitude, even with tears. I speak
here of what I _know_. I have seldom been more touched to the heart than
by the perusal of some of her _most_ private letters and notes, which
for tenderness of sentiment, genuine feeling, and simple yet forcible
expression, could not be surpassed.[2] Actress though she was, she had
no idea of doing any thing for the sake of appearances, or of courting
popularity by any means but excellence in her art. She loved the
elegances and refinements of life--enjoyed, and freely shared what she
had toiled to obtain--and in the earlier part of her career was the
frequent victim of her own kind and careless nature. She has been known
to give generously, nobly,--to sympathize warmly; but did she deny to
greedy selfishness or spendthrift vanity the twentieth demand on her
purse or her benevolence? Was she, while absorbed in her poetical,
ideal existence, the dupe of exterior shows in judging of character?
Or did she, from total ignorance of, or indifference to, the common-place
prejudices, or customary forms of society, unconsciously wound the
_amour-propre_ of some shallow flatterer or critic,--or by bringing the
gravity and glory of her histrionic impersonations into the frivolities
and hard realities of this our world, render herself obnoxious to vulgar
ridicule?--then was she made to feel what it is to live in the public
eye: then flew round the malignant slander, the vengeful lie, the base
sneer, the impertinent misinterpretation of what few could understand
and fewer feel! Reach _her_ these libels could not--but sometimes they
reached those whose affectionate reverence fenced her round from the
rude contact of real life. In some things Mrs. Siddons was like a child.
I have heard anecdotes of her extreme simplicity, which by the force of
contrast made me smile--at _them_, not at _her_: who could have laughed
at Mrs. Siddons? I should as soon have thought of laughing at the
Delphic Sybil.
As an artist, her genius appears to have been slowly developed. She did
not, as it has been said of her niece, "spring at once into the chair
of the tragic muse;" but toiled her way up to glory and excellence in
her profession, through length of time, difficulties, and obstacles
innumerable. She was exclusively professional; and all her attainments,
and all her powers, seem to have been directed to one end and aim.
Yet I suppose no one would have said of Mrs. Siddons, that she was
a "_mere actress_," as it was usually said of Garrick, that he was a
"_mere player_;"--the most admirable and versatile actor that ever
existed; but still the mere player;--nothing more--nothing better. He
does not appear to have had a tincture of that high gentlemanly feeling,
that native elevation of character, and general literary taste which
strike us in John Kemble and his brother Charles; nor any thing of the
splendid imagination, the enthusiasm of art, the personal grace and
grandeur, which threw such a glory around Mrs. Siddons. Of John Kemble
it might be said,[3] as Dryden said of Harte in his time, that "kings
and princes might have come to him, and taken lessons how to comport
themselves with dignity." And with the noble presence of Mrs. Siddons,
we associated in public and in private, something absolutely awful. We
were accustomed to bring her before our fancy as one habitually elevated
above the sphere of familiar life,--
"Attired in all the majesty of art--
Crown'd with the rich traditions of a soul
That hates to have her dignity profan'd
By any relish of an earthly thought."[4]
Who was it?--(I think Northcote the painter,) who said he had
seen a group of young ladies of rank, Lady Fannys and Lady Marys,
peeping through the half-open door of a room where Mrs. Siddons was
sitting, with the same timidity and curiosity as if it had been some
preternatural being,--much more than if it had been the queen: which
I can easily believe. I remember that the first time I found myself in
the same room with Mrs. Siddons, (I was then about twenty,) I gazed on
her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyptian pyramids--nay, with
a deeper awe, for what is material and physical immensity, compared
with moral and poetical grandeur? I was struck with a sensation which
made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some minutes; and when I
was led into conversation with her, my first words came faltering and
thick,--which never certainly would have been the case in presence of
the autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the noblest in the
land approached her with a deference not unmingled with a shade of
embarrassment, while she stood in regal guise majestic, with the air of
one who bestowed and never received honour.[5] Nor was this feeling of
her power, which was derived, partly from her own peculiar dignity of
deportment, partly from her association with all that was grand,
poetical, terrible, confined to those who could appreciate the full
measure of her endowments. Every member of that public, whose idol she
was, from the greatest down to the meanest, felt it more or less. I knew
a poor woman who once went to the house of Mrs. Siddons to be paid by
her daughter for some embroidery. Mrs. Siddons happened to be in the
room, and the woman perceiving who it was, was so overpowered, that she
could not count her money, and scarcely dared to draw her breath. "And
when I went away, ma'am," added she, in describing her own sensations,
"I walked all the way down the street, feeling myself a great deal
taller." This was the same unconscious feeling of the sublime, which
made Bouchardon say that, after reading the Iliad, he fancied himself
seven feet high.
She modelled very beautifully, and in this talent, which was in a manner
intuitive, she displayed a creative as well as an imitative power.
Might we not say that in the peculiar character of her genius--in the
combination of the _very_ real with the _very_ ideal, of the demonstrative
and the visionary, of vastness and symmetry, of the massive material
and the grand unearthly forms into which it shaped itself--there was
something analogous to sculpture? At all events, it is the opinion of
many who knew her, that if she had not been a great actress she would
have devoted herself to sculpture. She was never so happy as when
occupied with her modelling tools; she would stand at her work eight
hours together, scarcely turning her head. Music she passionately loved:
in her younger days her voice in singing was exquisitely sweet and
flexible. She would sometimes compose verses, and sing them to an
extemporaneous air; but I believe she did not perform on any instrument.
To complete this sketch I shall add an outline of her professional life.
Mrs. Siddons was born in 1755. She might be said, almost without
metaphor, to have been "born on the stage." All the family, I believe,
for two or three generations, had been players. In her early life she
endured many vicissitudes, and was acquainted with misery and hardship
in many repulsive forms. On this subject she had none of the pride
of a little mind; but alluded to her former situation with perfect
simplicity. The description in Mrs. Inchbald's Memoirs of "Mrs. Siddons
singing and mending her children's clothes," is from the life, and
charming as well as touching, when we consider her peculiar character
and her subsequent destinies. She was in her twenty-first year when
she made her first attempt in London, (for it was but an attempt,) in
the character of Portia. She also appeared as Lady Anne in Richard
III. and in comedy as Mrs. Strickland to Garrick's Ranger. She was
not successful: Garrick is said to have been jealous of her rising
powers: the public did not discover in her the future tragic muse, and
for herself--"She felt that she was greater than she knew." She returned
to her provincial career; she spent seven years in patient study, in
reflection, in contemplation, and in mastering the practical part of her
profession; and then she returned at the age of twenty-eight, and burst
upon the world in the prime of her beauty and transcendent powers, with
all the attributes of confirmed and acknowledged excellence.
It appears that, in her first season, she did not play one of Shakspeare's
characters: she performed Isabella, Euphrasia, Jane Shore, Calista,
and Zara. In a visit she paid to Dr. Johnson, at the conclusion of the
season, she informed him that it was her intention, the following year,
to bring out some of Shakspeare's heroines, particularly Katherine of
Arragon, to which she _then_ gave the preference as a character. Dr.
Johnson agreed with her, and added that, when she played Katherine, he
would hobble to the theatre himself to see her; but he did not live to
pay her this tribute of admiration. He, however, paid her another not
less valuable: describing his visitor after her departure, he said, "she
left nothing behind her to be censured or despised; neither praise nor
money, those two powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved
her."[6] In this interview she seems to have pleased the old critic and
moralist, who was also a severe and acute judge of human nature, and not
inclined to judge favourably of actresses, by the union of modesty with
native dignity which at all times distinguished her;--a rare union! and
most delightful in those who are the objects of the public gaze, and
when the popular enthusiasm is still in all its first intoxicating
effervescence.
The first of Shakspeare's characters which Mrs. Siddons performed was
Isabella, in Measure for Measure, (1784,) and the next Constance. In the
same year Sir Joshua painted her as the tragic Muse.[7] With what a deep
interest shall we now visit this her true apotheosis,--now that it has
received its last consecration! The rest of Shakspeare's characters
followed in this order: Lady Macbeth in 1785, and, soon afterwards, as
if by way of contrast, Desdemona, Ophelia, Rosalind. In 1786 she played
Imogen; in 1788 Katherine of Arragon; and, in 1789, Volumnia; and in the
same season she played Juliet, being then in her thirty-fifth year,--too
old for Juliet; nor did this ever become one of her popular parts; she
left it to her niece to identify herself for ever with the poetry and
sensibility, the youthful grace and fervid passion of Shakspeare's
Juliet; and we have as little chance of ever seeing such another Juliet
as Fanny Kemble, as of ever seeing such another Lady Macbeth as her
magnificent aunt.
A good critic, who was also a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons, asserts
that there must be something in acting which levels all poetical
distinctions, since people talked in the same breath of her Lady Macbeth
and Mrs. Beverley as being equally "fine pieces of acting." I think he
is mistaken. No one--no one at least but the most vulgar part of her
audience--ever equalized these two characters, even as pieces of acting;
or imagined for a moment that the same degree of talent which sufficed
to represent Mrs. Beverley could have grasped the towering grandeur
of such a character as Lady Macbeth;--dived into its profound and
gloomy depths--seized and reflected its wonderful gradations--displayed
its magnificence--developed its beauties, and revealed its terrors:
no such thing. She might have drawn more tears in Isabella than in
Constance--thrown more young ladies into hysterics in Belvidera than in
Katherine of Arragon; but all with whom I have conversed on the subject
of Mrs. Siddons, are agreed in this;--that her finest characters, as
pieces of art, were those which afforded the fullest scope for her
powers, and contained in themselves the largest materials in poetry,
grandeur, and passion: consequently, that her Constance, Katherine of
Arragon, Volumnia, Hermione, and Lady Macbeth stood pre-eminent. In
playing Jane de Montfort, in Joanna Baillie's tragedy, her audience
almost lost the sense of impersonation in the feeling of identity.
She _was_ Jane de Montfort--the actress, the woman, the character,
blended into each other. It is a mistaken idea that she herself
preferred the part of Aspasia (in Rowe's Bajazet) to any of these grand
impersonations. She spoke of it as one in which she had produced the
most extraordinary effect on the _nerves_ of her audience; and this is
true. "I recollect," said a gentleman to me, "being present at one of
the last representations of Bajazet: and at the moment when the order is
given to strangle Moneses, while Aspasia stands immoveable in front of
the stage, I turned my head, unable to endure more, and to my amazement
I beheld the whole pit staring ghastly, with upward faces, dilated eyes,
and mouths wide open--gasping--fascinated. Nor shall I ever forget the
strange effect produced by that sea of human faces, all fixed in one
simultaneous expression of stony horror. It realized for a moment the
fabled power of the Medusa--it was terrible!"
Of all her great characters, Lord Byron, I believe, preferred Constance,
to which she gave the preference herself, and esteemed it the most
difficult and the most finished of all her impersonations; but the
general opinion stamps her Lady Macbeth as the grandest effort of her
art; and therefore, as she was the first in her art, as the _ne plus
ultra_ of acting. This at least was the opinion of one who admired her
with all the fervour of a kindred genius, and could lavish on her praise
of such "rich words composed as made the gift more sweet." Of her Lady
Macbeth, he says, "nothing could have been imagined grander,--it was
something above nature; it seemed almost as if a being of a superior
order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty
of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from
her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her
eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person
bewildered: her lips moved involuntarily; all her gestures seemed
mechanical--she glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have
seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be
forgotten."
By profound and incessant study she had brought her conception and
representation of this character to such a pitch of perfection that the
imagination could conceive of nothing more magnificent or more finished;
and yet she has been heard to say, after playing it for thirty years,
that she never read over the part without discovering in it something
new; nor ever went on the stage to perform it, without spending the
whole morning in studying and meditating it, line by line, as intently
as if she were about to act it for the first time. In this character
she bid farewell to her profession and the public, (June 29th, 1812.)
The audience, on this occasion, paid her a singular and touching tribute
of respect. On her going off in the sleeping scene, they commanded the
curtain to fall, and would not suffer the play to proceed.[8]
The idea that Mrs. Siddons was quite unmoved by the emotions she
portrayed--the sorrows and the passions she embodied with such inimitable
skill and truth, is altogether false. Fine acting may accidentally be
mere impulse; it never can be wholly mechanical. To a late period of her
life she continued to be strongly, sometimes painfully, excited by her
own acting; the part of Constance always affected her powerfully--she
invariably left the stage, her face streaming with tears; and after
playing Lady Macbeth, she could not sleep: even after reading the play
of Macbeth a feverish, wakeful night was generally the consequence.
I am not old enough to remember Mrs. Siddons in her best days; but,
judging from my own recollections, I should say that, to hear her _read_
one of Shakspeare's plays, was a higher, a more complete gratification,
and a more astonishing display of her powers than her performance of any
single character. On the stage she was the perfect actress; when she was
reading Shakspeare, her profound enthusiastic admiration of the poet,
and deep insight into his most hidden beauties, made her almost a poetess,
or at least, like a priestess, full of the god of her idolatry. Her
whole soul looked out from her regal brow and effulgent eyes; and then
her countenance!--the inconceivable flexibility and musical intonations
of her voice! there was no got-up illusion here: no scenes--no trickery
of the stage; there needed no sceptred pall--no sweeping train, nor any
of the gorgeous accompaniments of tragedy:--SHE was Tragedy! When in
reading Macbeth she said, "give me the daggers!" they gleamed before our
eyes. The witch scenes in the same play she rendered awfully terrific
by the magic of looks and tones; she invested the weird sisters with
all their own infernal fascinations; they were the serious, poetical,
tragical personages which the poet intended them to be, and the wild
grotesque horror of their enchantments made the blood curdle. When,
in King John, she came to the passage beginning--
"If the midnight bell,
Did with his iron tongue and brazen note," &c.
I remember I felt every drop of blood pause, and then run backwards
through my veins with an overpowering awe and horror. No scenic
representation I ever witnessed produced the hundredth part of the
effect of her reading Hamlet. This tragedy was the triumph of her art.
Hamlet and his mother, Polonius, Ophelia, were all there before us.
Those who ever heard her give Ophelia's reply to Hamlet,
_Hamlet._ I loved you not.
_Ophelia._ I was the more deceived!
and the lines--
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows, &c.
will never forget their exquisite pathos. What a revelation of love and
woe was there!--the very heart seemed to break upon the utterance.
Lear was another of her grandest efforts; but her rare talent was not
confined to tragedy; none could exceed her in the power to conceive and
render witty and humorous character. I thought I had never understood
or felt the comic force of such parts as Polonius, Lucio, Gratiano, and
Shakspeare's clowns, till I heard the dialogue from her lips: and to
hear her read the Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, was hardly a
less perfect treat than to hear her read Macbeth.
The following short extract from a letter of Mrs. Joanna Baillie, dated
about a year before the death of Mrs. Siddons will, I am persuaded, be
read with a double interest, for _her_ sake who penned it, not less than
hers who is the subject of it.
"The most agreeable thing I have to begin with, is a visit we paid last
week to Mrs. Siddons. We had met her at dinner at Mr. Rogers's a few
days before, and she kindly asked us, our host and his sister, the
Thursday following; an invitation which we gladly accepted, though we
expected to see much decay in her powers of expression, and consequently
to have our pleasure mingled with pain. Judge then of our delight
when we heard her read the best scenes of Hamlet, with expression of
countenance, voice, and action, that would have done honour to her
best days! She was before us as an unconquerable creature, over whose
astonishing gifts of nature time had no power.[9] She complained of her
voice, which she said was not obedient to her will; but it appeared to
my ear to be peculiarly true to nature, and the more so, because it had
lost that deep solemnity of tone which she, perhaps, had considered as
an excellence. I thought I could trace in the pity and tenderness, mixed
with her awe of the ghost, the natural feelings of one who had lost dear
friends, and expected to go to them soon; and her reading of that scene,
(the noblest which dramatic art ever achieved,) went to my heart as
it had never done before. At the end, Mr. Rogers very justly said,
'Oh, that we could have assembled a company of young people to witness
this, that they might have conveyed the memory of it down to another
generation!' In short, we left her full of admiration, as well as of
gratitude, that she had made such an exertion to gratify so small an
audience; for, exclusive of her own family, we were but five."
She continued to exercise her power of reading and reciting long after
the date of this letter, even till within a few days of her death,
although her health had long been in a declining state.[10] She died at
length on the 8th of June, 1831, after a few hours of acute suffering,
having lived nearly seventy-six years, of which forty-six were spent in
the constant presence and service of the public. She was an honour to
her profession, which was more honoured and honourable in her person and
family than it ever was before, or will be hereafter, till the stage
becomes something very different from what it now is.
And, since it has pleased some writers, (who apparently knew as little
of her real situation as of her real character,) to lament over the
misfortune of this celebrated woman, in having survived all her
children, &c. &c. it may be interesting to add that, a short time before
her death, she was seated in a room in her own house, when about thirty
of her young relatives, children, grand-children, nephews and nieces,
were assembled, and looked on while they were dancing, with great and
evident pleasure: and that her surviving daughter, Cecilia Siddons,[11]
who had been, for many years, the inseparable friend and companion of
her mother, attended upon her with truly filial devotion and reverence
to the last moment of existence. Her admirers may, therefore, console
themselves with the idea that in "love, obedience, troops of friends,"
as well as affluence and fame, she had "all that should accompany old
age." She died full of years and honours; having enjoyed, in her long
life, as much glory and prosperity as any mortal could expect: having
imparted more intense and general pleasure than ever mortal did; and
having paid the tribute of mortality in such suffering and sorrow as
wait on the widowed wife and the bereaved mother. If with such rare
natural gifts were blended some human infirmities;--if the cultivation
of the imaginative far above the perceptive faculties, hazarded
her individual happiness;--if in the course of a professional career
of unexampled continuance and splendour, the love of praise ever
degenerated into the appetite for applause;--if the worshipped actress
languished out of her atmosphere of incense,--is this to be made matter
of wonder or of ill-natured comment? Did ever any human being escape
more _intacte_ in person and mind from the fiery furnace of popular
admiration? Let us remember the severity of the ordeal to which she was
exposed; the hard lot of those who pass their lives in the full-noon
glare of public observation, where every speck is noted! What a
difference too, between the aspiration after immortality and the pursuit
of celebrity!--The noise of distant and future fame is like the sound of
the far-off sea, and the mingled roll of its multitudinous waves, which,
as it swells on the ear, elevates the soul with a sublime emotion; but
present and loud applause, flung continually in one's face, is like the
noisy dash of the surf upon the rock,--and it requires the firmness of
the rock to bear it.
SKETCHES OF FANNY KEMBLE IN JULIET.
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES TO MR. JOHN HAYTER'S SKETCHES OF FANNY KEMBLE,
IN THE CHARACTER OF JULIET.[12]
"Non piace a lei che innumerabil turba
Viva in atto di fuor, morta di dentro,
Le applauda a caso, e mano a man percuota;
Ne si rallegra se le rozzi voci
Volgano a lei quelle induiti lodi--
--Ma la possanza del divino iugegno
Vita di dentro."
_Gasparo Gozzi--Sermone xiv._
It would be doing an injustice to the author of these sketches, and
something worse than injustice to her who is the subject of them,
should more be expected than the pencil could possibly convey, and
more required than the artist ever intended to execute. Their merit
consists in their fidelity, as far as they go; their interest in
conveying a lively and distinct idea of some immediate and transient
effects of grace and expression. They do not assume to be portraits of
Miss Kemble; they are merely a series of rapid outlines, caught from
her action, and exhibiting, at the first glance, just so much of the
individual and peculiar character she has thrown into her impersonation
of Juliet, as at once to be recognised by those who have seen her. To
them alone these isolated passages--linked together in the imagination
by all the intervening graces of attitude and sentiment, by the
recollection of a countenance where the kindled soul looks out through
every feature, and of a voice whose tones tremble into one's very
heart--will give some faint reflection of the effect produced by the
whole of this beautiful piece of acting,--or rather of nature, for here
"each seems either." It will be allowed, even by the most enthusiastic
lover of painting, that the merely imitative arts can do but feeble
justice to the powers of a fine actress; for what graphic skill can fix
the evanescent shades of feeling as they melt one into another?--
"What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath?"
--and yet even those who have not witnessed and may never witness Miss
Kemble's performance, to whom her name alone can be borne through long
intervals of space and time, will not regard these little sketches
without curiosity and interest. If any one had thought of transferring
to paper a connected series of some of the awe-commanding gestures of
Mrs. Siddons in one of her great parts; or caught (flying) some of the
inimitable graces of movement and attitude, and sparkling effects of
manner, with which Mrs. Charles Kemble once enchanted the world, with
what avidity would they now be sought!--they would have served as
studies for their successors in art to the end of time.
All the fine arts, poetry excepted, possess a limited range of power.
Painting and sculpture can convey none of the graces that belong to
movement and sound: music can suggest vague sentiments and feelings, but
it cannot express incident, or situation, or form, or colour. Poetry
alone grasps an unlimited sceptre, rules over the whole visible and
intellectual universe, and knows no bounds but those of human genius.
And it is here that tragic acting, considered in its perfection, and in
its relation to the fine arts, is allied to poetry, or rather is itself
living, breathing poetry; made sensible in a degree to the hardest and
dullest minds, seizing on the dormant sympathies of our nature, and
dismissing us again to the cares of this "working-day world," if not
very much wiser, or better, or happier, at least enabled to digest with
less bitterness the mixture of our good and evil days.
But in the midst of the just enthusiasm which a great actor or actress
excites, so long as they exist to minister to our delight;--in the midst
of that atmosphere of light and life they shed around them, it is a
common subject of repining that such glory should be so transient; that
an art requiring in its perfection such a rare combination of mental
and external qualities, can leave behind no permanent monument of its
own excellence, but must depend on the other fine arts for all it can
claim of immortality: that Garrick, for instance, has become a name--no
more--his fame the echo of an echo! that Mrs. Siddons herself has
bequeathed to posterity only a pictured semblance;--that when the voice
of Pasta is heard no longer upon earth, the utmost pomp of words can
only attest her powers! The painter and the poet, struggling through
obscurity to the heights of fame, and consuming a life in the pursuit of
(perhaps) posthumous celebrity, may say to the sublime actress,--"Thou
in thy generation hast had thy meed; we have waited patiently for
ours: thou art vanished like a lost star from the firmament, into the
'uncomfortable night of nothing'; we have left the light of our souls
behind us, and survive to 'blessings and eternal praise!'" And why
should it _not_ be so? Were it otherwise, the even-handed distribution
of the best gifts of Heaven among favoured mortals might with reason be
impugned. Shall the young spirit "dampt by the necessity of oblivion"
disdain what is attainable because it cannot grasp all? Conceive for a
moment the situation of a woman, in the prime and bloom of existence,
with all her youthful enthusiasm, her unworn feelings fresh about her,
privileged to step forth for a short space out of the bounds of common
life, without o'erstepping the modesty of her feminine nature, permitted
to cast off for a while, unreproved and unrestrained, the conventional
trammels of form and manner; and called upon to realise in her own
presence and person the divinest dreams of poetry and romance; to send
forth in a word--a glance,--the electric flash which is felt through a
thousand bosoms at once, till every heart beats the same measure with
her own! Is there nothing in all this to countervail the dangers, the
evils, and the vicissitudes attendant on this splendid and public exercise
of talent? It may possibly become, in time, a thing of habitude; it
_may_ be degraded into a mere _besoin de l'amour propre_--a necessary,
yet palling excitement: but in its outset it is surely a triumph far
beyond the mere intoxication of personal vanity; and to the very last,
it must be deemed a magnificent and an enviable power.
It was difficult to select for graphic delineation any particular points
from Miss Kemble's representation of Juliet. These drawings may not,
perhaps, justify the enthusiasm she excited: but it ought to add to
their value rather than detract from it, that the causes of their
imperfection comprehend the very foundation on which the present and
future celebrity of this young actress may be said to rest. In the first
place, the power by which she seized at once on public admiration and
sympathy, was not derived from any thing external. It was not founded in
the splendour of her hereditary pretensions, though in them there was
much to fascinate: nor in the departed or fading glories of her race:
nor in the remembrance of her mother--once the young Euphrosyne of our
stage: nor in the name and high talent of her father, with whom, it was
_once_ feared the poetical and classical school of acting was destined
to perish from the scene: nor in any mere personal advantages, for in
these she has been excelled,--
"Though on her eyelids many graces sit
Under the shadow of those even brows:"
nor in her extreme youth, and delicacy of figure, which tell so
beautifully in the character of Juliet: nor in the acclaim of public
favour--
"To have all eyes
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues
Shouting loud praises; to rob every heart
Of love--
This glory round about her hath thrown beams."