Alfred Tennyson had only just gathered his earliest laurels. My brother
John gave me the first copy of his poems I ever possessed, with a
prophecy of his future fame and excellence written on the fly-leaf of
it. I have never ceased to exult in my possession of that copy of the
first edition of those poems, which became the songs of our every day
and every hour, almost; we delighted in them and knew them by heart, and
read and said them over and over again incessantly; they were our
pictures, our music, and infinite was the scorn and indignation with
which we received the slightest word of adverse criticism upon them. I
remember Mrs. Milman, one evening at my father's house, challenging me
laughingly about my enthusiasm for Tennyson, and asking me if I had read
a certain severely caustic and condemnatory article in the _Quarterly_
upon his poems. "Have you read it?" said she; "it is so amusing! Shall I
send it to you?" "No, thank you," said I; "have you read the poems, may
I ask?" "I cannot say that I have," said she, laughing. "Oh, then," said
I (not laughing), "perhaps it would be better that I should send you
those?"
It has always been incomprehensible to me how the author of those poems
ever brought himself to alter them, as he did, in so many instances--all
(as it seemed to me) for the worse rather than the better. I certainly
could hardly love his verses better than he did himself, but the various
changes he made in them have always appeared to me cruel disfigurements
of the original thoughts and expressions, which were to me treasures not
to be touched even by his hand; and his changing lines which I thought
perfect, omitting beautiful stanzas that I loved, and interpolating
others that I hated, and disfiguring and maiming his own exquisite
creations with second thoughts (none of which were best to me), has
caused me to rejoice, while I mourn, over my copy of the first version
of "The May Queen," "OEnone," "The Miller's Daughter," and all the
subsequent _improved_ poems, of which the improvements were to me
desecrations. In justice to Tennyson, I must add that the present
generation of his readers swear by _their_ version of his poems as we
did by ours, for the same reason,--they knew it first.
The early death of Arthur Hallam, and the imperishable monument of love
raised by Tennyson's genius to his memory, have tended to give him a
pre-eminence among the companions of his youth which I do not think his
abilities would have won for him had he lived; though they were
undoubtedly of a high order. There was a gentleness and purity almost
virginal in his voice, manner, and countenance; and the upper part of
his face, his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness for his early
translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still must wear in
heaven. Some time or other, at some rare moments of the divine spirit's
supremacy in our souls, we all put on the heavenly face that will be
ours hereafter, and for a brief lightning space our friends behold us as
we shall look when this mortal has put on immortality. On Arthur
Hallam's brow and eyes this heavenly light, so fugitive on other human
faces, rested habitually, as if he was thinking and seeing in heaven.
Of all those very remarkable young men, John Sterling was by far the
most brilliant and striking in his conversation, and the one of whose
future eminence we should all of us have augured most confidently. But
though his life was cut off prematurely, it was sufficiently prolonged
to disprove this estimate of his powers. The extreme vividness of his
look, manner, and speech gave a wonderful impression of latent vitality
and power; perhaps some of this lambent, flashing brightness may have
been but the result of the morbid physical conditions of his existence,
like the flush on his cheek and the fire in his eye; the over stimulated
and excited intellectual activity, the offspring of disease, mistaken by
us for morning instead of sunset splendor, promise of future light and
heat instead of prognostication of approaching darkness and decay. It
certainly has always struck me as singular that Sterling, who in his
life accomplished so little and left so little of the work by which men
are generally pronounced to be gifted with exceptional ability, should
have been the subject of two such interesting biographies as those
written of him by Julius Hare and Carlyle. I think he must have been one
of those persons in whom genius makes itself felt and acknowledged
chiefly through the medium of personal intercourse; a not infrequent
thing, I think, with women, and perhaps men, wanting the full vigor of
normal health. I suppose it is some failure not so much in the power
possessed as in the power of producing it in a less evanescent form than
that of spoken words, and the looks that with such organizations are
more than the words themselves. Sterling's genius was his _Wesen_,
himself, and he could detach no portion of it that retained anything
like the power and beauty one would have expected. After all, the world
has twice been moved (once intellectually and once morally), as never
before or since, by those whose spoken words, gathered up by others, are
all that remain of them. Personal influence is the strongest and the
most subtle of powers, and Sterling impressed all who knew him as a man
of undoubted genius; those who never knew him will perhaps always wonder
why.
My life was rather sad at this time: my brother's failure at college was
a source of disappointment and distress to my parents; and I, who
admired him extremely, and believed in him implicitly, was grieved at
his miscarriage and his absence from England; while the darkening
prospects of the theater threw a gloom over us all. My hitherto frequent
interchange of letters with my dear friend H---- S---- had become
interrupted and almost suspended by the prolonged and dangerous illness
of her brother; and I was thrown almost entirely upon myself, and was
finding my life monotonously dreary, when events occurred that changed
its whole tenor almost suddenly, and determined my future career with
less of deliberation than would probably have satisfied either my
parents or myself under less stringent circumstances.
It was in the autumn of 1829, my father being then absent on a
professional tour in Ireland, that my mother, coming in from walking one
day, threw herself into a chair and burst into tears. She had been
evidently much depressed for some time past, and I was alarmed at her
distress, of which I begged her to tell me the cause. "Oh, it has come
at last," she answered; "our property is to be sold. I have seen that
fine building all covered with placards and bills of sale; the theater
must be closed, and I know not how many hundred poor people will be
turned adrift without employment!" I believed the theater employed
regularly seven hundred persons in all its different departments,
without reckoning the great number of what were called supernumeraries,
who were hired by the night at Christmas, Easter, and on all occasions
of any specially showy spectacle. Seized with a sort of terror, like the
Lady of Shallott, that "the curse had come upon me," I comforted my
mother with expressions of pity and affection, and, as soon as I left
her, wrote a most urgent entreaty to my father that he would allow me to
act for myself, and seek employment as a governess, so as to relieve him
at once at least of the burden of my maintenance. I brought this letter
to my mother, and begged her permission to send it, to which she
consented; but, as I afterward learned, she wrote by the same post to my
father, requesting him not to give a positive answer to my letter until
his return to town. The next day she asked me whether I seriously
thought I had any real talent for the stage. My school-day triumphs in
Racine's "Andromaque" were far enough behind me, and I could only
answer, with as much perplexity as good faith, that I had not the
slightest idea whether I had or not. She begged me to learn some part
and say it to her, that she might form some opinion of my power, and I
chose Shakespeare's Portia, then, as now, my ideal of a perfect
woman--the wise, witty woman, loving with all her soul and submitting
with all her heart to a man whom everybody but herself (who was the best
judge) would have judged her inferior; the laughter-loving,
light-hearted, true-hearted, deep-hearted woman, full of keen
perception, of active efficiency, of wisdom prompted by love, of
tenderest unselfishness, of generous magnanimity; noble, simple, humble,
pure; true, dutiful, religious, and full of fun; delightful above all
others, the woman of women. Having learned it by heart, I recited Portia
to my mother, whose only comment was, "There is hardly passion enough in
this part to test any tragic power. I wish you would study Juliet for
me." Study to me then, as unfortunately long afterward, simply meant to
learn by heart, which I did again, and repeated my lesson to my mother,
who again heard me without any observation whatever. Meantime my father
returned to town and my letter remained unanswered, and I was wondering
in my mind what reply I should receive to my urgent entreaty, when one
morning my mother told me she wished me to recite Juliet to my father;
and so in the evening I stood up before them both, and with
indescribable trepidation repeated my first lesson in tragedy.
They neither of them said anything beyond "Very well,--very nice, my
dear," with many kisses and caresses, from which I escaped to sit down
on the stairs half-way between the drawing-room and my bedroom, and get
rid of the repressed nervous fear I had struggled with while reciting,
in floods of tears. A few days after this my father told me he wished to
take me to the theater with him to try whether my voice was of
sufficient strength to fill the building; so thither I went. That
strange-looking place, the stage, with its racks of pasteboard and
canvas--streets, forests, banqueting-halls, and dungeons--drawn apart on
either side, was empty and silent; not a soul was stirring in the
indistinct recesses of its mysterious depths, which seemed to stretch
indefinitely behind me. In front, the great amphitheater, equally empty
and silent, wrapped in its gray holland covers, would have been
absolutely dark but for a long, sharp, thin shaft of light that darted
here and there from some height and distance far above me, and alighted
in a sudden, vivid spot of brightness on the stage. Set down in the
midst of twilight space, as it were, with only my father's voice coming
to me from where he stood hardly distinguishable in the gloom, in those
poetical utterances of pathetic passion I was seized with the spirit of
the thing; my voice resounded through the great vault above and before
me, and, completely carried away by the inspiration of the wonderful
play, I acted Juliet as I do not believe I ever acted it again, for I
had no visible Romeo, and no audience to thwart my imagination; at
least, I had no consciousness of any, though in truth I had one. In the
back of one of the private boxes, commanding the stage but perfectly
invisible to me, sat an old and warmly attached friend of my father's,
Major D----, a man of the world--of London society,--a passionate lover
of the stage, an amateur actor of no mean merit, one of the members of
the famous Cheltenham dramatic company, a first-rate critic in all
things connected with art and literature, a refined and courtly,
courteous gentleman; the best judge, in many respects, that my father
could have selected, of my capacity for my profession and my chance of
success in it. Not till after the event had justified my kind old
friend's prophecy did I know that he had witnessed that morning's
performance, and joining my father at the end of it had said, "Bring her
out at once; it will be a great success." And so three weeks from that
time I was brought out, and it was a "great success." Three weeks was
not much time for preparation of any sort for such an experiment, but I
had no more, to become acquainted with my fellow actors and actresses,
not one of whom I had ever spoken with or seen--off the stage--before;
to learn all the technical _business_, as it is called, of the stage;
how to carry myself toward the audience, which was not--but was to
be--before me; how to concert my movements with the movements of those I
was acting with, so as not to impede or intercept their efforts, while
giving the greatest effect of which I was capable to my own.
I do not wonder, when I remember this brief apprenticeship to my
profession, that Mr. Macready once said that I did not know the elements
of it. Three weeks of morning rehearsals of the play at the theater, and
evening consultations at home as to colors and forms of costume, what I
should wear, how my hair should be dressed, etc., etc.,--in all which I
remained absolutely passive in the hands of others, taking no part and
not much interest in the matter,--ended in my mother's putting aside all
suggestions of innovation like the adoption of the real picturesque
costume of mediæval Verona (which was, of course, Juliet's proper
dress), and determining in favor of the traditional stage costume for
the part, which was simply a dress of plain white satin with a long
train, with short sleeves and a low body; my hair was dressed in the
fashion in which I usually wore it; a girdle of fine paste brilliants,
and a small comb of the same, which held up my hair, were the only
theatrical parts of the dress, which was as perfectly simple and as
absolutely unlike anything Juliet ever wore as possible.
Poor Mrs. Jameson made infinite protests against this decision of my
mother's, her fine artistic taste and sense of fitness being intolerably
shocked by the violation of every propriety in a Juliet attired in a
modern white satin ball dress amid scenery representing the streets and
palaces of Verona in the fourteenth century, and all the other
characters dressed with some reference to the supposed place and period
of the tragedy. Visions too, no doubt, of sundry portraits of Raphael,
Titian, Giorgione, Bronzino,--beautiful alike in color and
fashion,--vexed her with suggestions, with which she plied my mother;
who, however, determined as I have said, thinking the body more than
raiment, and arguing that the unincumbered use of the person, and the
natural grace of young arms, neck, and head, and unimpeded movement of
the limbs (all which she thought more compatible with the simple white
satin dress than the picturesque mediæval costume) were points of
paramount importance. My mother, though undoubtedly very anxious that I
should look well, was of course far more desirous that I should act
well, and judged that whatever rendered my dress most entirely
subservient to my acting, and least an object of preoccupation and
strange embarrassment to myself, was, under the circumstances of my
total inexperience and brief period of preparation, the thing to be
chosen, and I am sure that in the main she judged wisely. The mere
appendage of a train--three yards of white satin--following me wherever
I went, was to me a new, and would have been a difficult experience to
most girls. As it was, I never knew, after the first scene of the play,
what became of my train, and was greatly amused when Lady Dacre told me,
the next morning, that as soon as my troubles began I had snatched it up
and carried it on my arm, which I did quite unconsciously, because I
found something in the way of _Juliet's feet_.
I have often admired the consummate good sense with which, confronting a
whole array of authorities, historical, artistical, æsthetical, my
mother stoutly maintained in their despite that nothing was to be
adopted on the stage that was in itself ugly, ungraceful, or even
curiously antiquated and singular, however correct it might be with
reference to the particular period, or even to authoritative portraits
of individual characters of the play. The passions, sentiments, actions,
and sufferings of human beings, she argued, were the main concern of a
fine drama, not the clothes they wore. I think she even preferred an
unobtrusive indifference to a pedantic accuracy, which, she said, few
people appreciated, and which, if anything, rather took the attention
from the acting than added to its effect, when it was really fine.
She always said, when pictures and engravings were consulted, "Remember,
this presents but one view of the person, and does not change its
position: how will this dress look when it walks, runs, rushes, kneels,
sits down, falls, and turns its back?" I think an edge was added to my
mother's keen, rational, and highly artistic sense of this matter of
costume because it was the special hobby of her "favorite aversion," Mr.
E----, who had studied with great zeal and industry antiquarian
questions connected with the subject of stage representations, and was
perpetually suggesting to my father improvements on the old ignorant
careless system which prevailed under former managements.
It is very true that, as she said, Garrick acted Macbeth in a full court
suit of scarlet,--knee-breeches, powdered wig, pigtail, and all; and
Mrs. Siddons acted the Grecian Daughter in piles of powdered curls, with
a forest of feathers on the top of them, high-heeled shoes, and a
portentous hoop; and both made the audience believe that they looked
just as they should do. But for all that, actors and actresses who were
neither Garrick nor Mrs. Siddons were not less like the parts they
represented by being at least dressed as they should be; and the fine
accuracy of the Shakespearean revivals of Mr. Macready and Charles Kean
was in itself a great enjoyment; nobody was ever told to _omit_ the
tithing of mint and cummin, though other matters were more important;
and Kean's Othello would have been the grand performance it was, even
with the advantage of Mr. Fechter's clever and picturesque "getting up"
of the play, as a frame to it; as Mademoiselle Rachel's wonderful
fainting exclamation of "Oh, mon cher Curiace!" lost none of its
poignant pathos, though she knew how every fold of her drapery fell and
rested on the chair on which she sank in apparent unconsciousness.
Criticising a portrait of herself in that scene, she said to the
painter, "Ma robe ne fait pas ce pli la; elle fait, au contraire,
celui-ci." The artist, inclined to defend his picture, asked her how,
while she was lying with her eyes shut and feigning utter insensibility,
she could possibly tell anything about the plaits of her dress.
"Allez-y-voir," replied Rachel; and the next time she played Camille,
the artist was able to convince himself by more careful observation that
she was right, and that there was probably no moment of the piece at
which this consummate artist was not aware of the effect produced by
every line and fold of the exquisite costume, of which she had studied
and prepared every detail as carefully as the wonderful movements of her
graceful limbs, the intonations of her awful voice, and the changing
expressions of her terribly beautiful countenance.
In later years, after I became the directress of my own stage costumes,
I adopted one for Juliet, made after a beautiful design of my friend,
Mrs. Jameson, which combined my mother's _sine qua non_ of simplicity
with a form and fashion in keeping with the supposed period of the play.
My frame of mind under the preparations that were going forward for my
_début_ appears to me now curious enough. Though I had found out that I
could act, and had acted with a sort of frenzy of passion and entire
self-forgetfulness the first time I ever uttered the wonderful
conception I had undertaken to represent, my going on the stage was
absolutely an act of duty and conformity to the will of my parents,
strengthened by my own conviction that I was bound to help them by every
means in my power. The theatrical profession was, however, utterly
distasteful to me, though _acting_ itself, that is to say, dramatic
personation, was not; and every detail of my future vocation, from the
preparations behind the scenes to the representations before the
curtain, was more or less repugnant to me. Nor did custom ever render
this aversion less; and liking my work so little, and being so devoid of
enthusiasm, respect, or love for it, it is wonderful to me that I ever
achieved _any_ success in it at all. The dramatic element inherent in my
organization must have been very powerful, to have enabled me without
either study of or love for my profession to do anything worth anything
in it.
But this is the reason why, with an unusual gift and many unusual
advantages for it, I did really so little; why my performances were
always uneven in themselves and perfectly unequal with each other, never
complete as a whole, however striking in occasional parts, and never at
the same level two nights together; depending for their effect upon the
state of my nerves and spirits, instead of being the result of
deliberate thought and consideration,--study, in short, carefully and
conscientiously applied to my work; the permanent element which
preserves the artist, however inevitably he must feel the influence of
moods of mind and body, from ever being at their mercy.
I brought but one half the necessary material to the exercise of my
profession, that which nature gave me; and never added the cultivation
and labor requisite to produce any fine performance in the right sense
of the word; and, coming of a family of _real_ artists, have never felt
that I deserved that honorable name.
A letter written at this time to Miss S---- shows how comparatively
small a part my approaching ordeal engrossed my thoughts.
JAMES STREET, September 24, 1829,
MY DEAREST H----,
Your letter grieved me very much, but it did not surprise me; of
your brother's serious illness I had heard from my cousin, Horace
Twiss. But is there indeed cause for the terrible anxiety you
express? I know how impossible it is to argue with the
apprehensions of affection, and should have forborne this letter
altogether, but that I felt very deeply your kindness in writing to
me at such a time, and that I would fain assure you of my
heart-felt sympathy, however unavailing it may be. To you who have
a steadfast anchor for your hopes, I ought not, perhaps, to say,
"Do not despond." Yet, dearest H----, do not despond: is there
_any_ occasion when despair is justified? I know how lightly all
soothing counsel must be held, in a case of such sorrow as yours,
but among fellow-Christians such words still have some
significance; for the most unworthy of that holy profession may
point unfalteringly to the only consolations adequate to the need
of those far above them in every endowment of mind and heart and
religious attainment. Dear H----, I hardly know how to tell you how
much I feel for you, how sincerely I hope your fears may prove
groundless, and how earnestly I pray that, should they prove
prophetic, you may be enabled to bear the affliction, to meet which
I doubt not strength will be given you. This is all I dare say;
those who love you best will hardly venture to say more. To put
away entirely the idea of an evil which one may be called upon at
any moment to encounter would hardly be wise, even if it were
possible, in this world where every happiness one enjoys is but a
loan, the repayment of which may be exacted at the very moment,
perhaps, when we are forgetting in its possession the precarious
tenure by which alone it is ours.
My dear father and mother have both been very unwell; the former is
a little recovered, but the latter is still in a sad state of
bodily suffering and mental anxiety. Our two boys are well and
happy, and I am very well and not otherwise than happy. I regret to
say Mrs. Henry Siddons will leave London in a very short time; this
is a great loss to me. I owe more to her than I can ever repay; for
though abundant pains had been bestowed upon me previously to my
going to her, it was she who caused to spring whatever scattered
seeds of good were in me, which almost seemed as if they had been
cast into the soil in vain.
My dear H----, I am going on the stage: the nearest period talked
of for my _début_ is the first of October, at the opening of the
theater; the furthest, November; but I almost think I should prefer
the nearest, for it is a very serious trial to look forward to, and
I wish it were over. Juliet is to be my opening part, but not to my
father's Romeo; there would be many objections to that; he will do
Mercutio for me. I do not enter more fully upon this, because I
know how few things can be of interest to you in your present state
of feeling, but I wished you not to find the first notice of my
entrance on the stage of life in a newspaper. God bless you,
dearest H----, and grant you better hopes.
Your most affectionate
FANNY.
My father not acting Romeo with me deprived me of the most poetical and
graceful stage lover of his day; but the public, who had long been
familiar with his rendering of the part of Romeo, gained as much as I
lost, by his taking that of Mercutio, which has never since been so
admirably represented, and I dare affirm will never be given more
perfectly. The graceful ease, and airy sparkling brilliancy of his
delivery of the witty fancies of that merry gentleman, the gallant
defiance of his bearing toward the enemies of his house, and his
heroically pathetic and humorous death-scene, were beyond description
charming. He was one of the best Romeos, and incomparably _the_ best
Mercutio, that ever trod the English stage.
My father was Miss O'Neill's Romeo throughout her whole theatrical
career, during which no other Juliet was tolerated by the English
public. This amiable and excellent woman was always an attached friend
of our family, and one day, when she was about to take leave of me, at
the end of a morning visit, I begged her to let my father have the
pleasure of seeing her, and ran to his study to tell him whom I had with
me. He followed me hastily to the drawing-room, and stopping at the
door, extended his arms towards her, exclaiming, "Ah, Juliet!" Lady
Becher ran to him and embraced him with a pretty, affectionate grace,
and the scene was pathetical as well as comical, for they were both
white-haired, she being considerably upward of sixty and he of seventy
years old; but she still retained the slender elegance of her exquisite
figure, and he some traces of his pre-eminent personal beauty.
My mother had a great admiration and personal regard for Lady Becher,
and told me an anecdote of her early life which transmitted those
feelings of hers to me. Lord F----, eldest son of the Earl of E----, a
personally and mentally attractive young man, fell desperately in love
with Miss O'Neill, who was (what the popular theatrical heroine of the
day always is) the realization of their ideal to the youth, male and
female, of her time, the stage star of her contemporaries. Lord F----'s
family had nothing to say against the character, conduct, or personal
endowments of the beautiful, actress who had enchanted, to such serious
purpose as marriage, the heir of their house; but much, reasonably and
rightly enough, against marriages disproportionate to such a degree as
that, and the objectionable nature of the young woman's peculiar
circumstances and public calling. Both Miss O'Neill, however, and Lord
F---- were enough in earnest in their mutual regard to accept the test
of a year's separation and suspension of all intercourse. She remained
to utter herself in Juliet to the English public, and her lover went and
travelled abroad, both believing in themselves and each other. No
letters or communication passed between them; but toward the end of
their year of probation vague rumors came flying to England of the life
of dissipation led by the young man, and of the unworthy companions with
whom he entertained the most intimate relations. After this came more
explicit tales of positive entanglement with one particular person, and
reports of an entire devotion to one object quite incompatible with the
constancy professed and promised to his English mistress.
Probably aware that every effort would, till the last, be made by Lord
F----'s family to detach them from each other, bound by her promise to
hold no intercourse with him, but determined to take the verdict of her
fate from no one but himself, Miss O'Neill obtained a brief leave of
absence from her theatrical duties, went with her brother and sister to
Calais, whence she travelled alone to Paris (poor, fair Juliet! when I
think of her, not as I ever knew her, but such as I know she must then
have been, no more pathetic image presents itself to my mind), and took
effectual measures to ascertain beyond all shadow of doubt the bitter
truth of the evil reports of her fickle lover's mode of life. His
devotion to one lady, the more respectable form of infidelity which must
inevitably have canceled their contract of love, was not indeed true,
and probably the story had been fabricated because the mere general
accusation of profligacy might easily have been turned into an appeal to
her mercy, as the result of reckless despondency and of his utter
separation from her; and a woman in her circumstances might not have
been hard to find who would have persuaded herself that she might
overlook "all that," reclaim her lover, and be an Earl's wife. Miss
O'Neill rejoined her family at Calais, wrote to Lord F----'s father, the
Earl of E----, her final and irrevocable rejection of his son's suit,
fell ill of love and sorrow, and lay for some space between life and
death for the sake of her unworthy lover; rallied bravely, recovered,
resumed her work,--her sway over thousands of human hearts,--and, after
lapse of healing and forgiving and forgetting time, married Sir William
Wrixon Becher.
The peculiar excellence of her acting lay in the expression of pathos,
sorrow, anguish,--the sentimental and suffering element of tragedy. She
was expressly devised for a representative victim; she had, too, a rare
endowment for her special range of characters, in an easily excited,
superficial sensibility, which caused her to cry, as she once said to
me, "buckets full," and enabled her to exercise the (to most men)
irresistible influence of a beautiful woman in tears. The power (or
weakness) of abundant weeping without disfigurement is an attribute of
deficient rather than excessive feeling. In such persons the tears are
poured from their crystal cups without muscular distortion of the rest
of the face. In proportion to the violence or depth of emotion, and the
acute or profound sensibility of the temperament, is the disturbance of
the countenance. In sensitive organizations, the muscles round the
nostrils and lips quiver and are distorted, the throat and temples
swell, and a grimace, which but for its miserable significance would be
grotesque, convulses the whole face. Men's tears always seem to me as if
they were pumped up from their heels, and strained through every drop of
blood in their veins; women's, to start as under a knife stroke, direct
with a gush from their heart, abundant and beneficent; but again, women
of the temperament I have alluded to above have fountains of lovely
tears behind their lovely eyes, and their weeping, which is
indescribably beautiful, is comparatively painless, and yet pathetic
enough to challenge tender compassion. I have twice seen such tears
shed, and never forgotten them: once from heaven-blue eyes, and the face
looked like a flower with pearly dewdrops sliding over it; and again,
once from magnificent, dark, uplifted orbs, from which the falling tears
looked like diamond rain-drops by moonlight.
Miss O'Neill was a supremely touching, but neither a powerful nor a
passionate actress. Personally, she was the very beau ideal of feminine
weakness in its most attractive form--delicacy. She was tall, slender,
elegantly formed, and extremely graceful; her features were regular and
finely chiseled, and her hair beautiful; her eyes were too light, and
her eyebrows and eyelashes too pale for expression; her voice wanted
variety and brilliancy for comic intonation, but was deep and sonorous,
and of a fine pathetic and tragic quality.
It was not an easy matter to find a Romeo for me, and in the emergency
my father and mother even thought of my brother Henry's trying the part.
He was in the first bloom of youth, and really might be called
beautiful; and certainly, a few years later, might have been the very
ideal of a Romeo. But he looked too young for the part, as indeed he
was, being three years my junior. The overwhelming objection, however,
was his own insuperable dislike to the idea of acting, and his ludicrous
incapacity for assuming the faintest appearance of any sentiment.
However, he learned the words, and never shall I forget the explosion of
laughter which shook my father, my mother, and myself, when, after
hearing him recite the balcony scene with the most indescribable mixture
of shy terror and nervous convulsions of suppressed giggling, my father
threw down the book, and Henry gave vent to his feelings by clapping his
elbows against his sides and bursting into a series of triumphant
cock-crows--an expression of mental relief so ludicrously in contrast
with his sweet, sentimental face, and the part he had just been
pretending to assume, that I thought we never should have recovered from
the fits it sent us into. We were literally all crying with laughter,
and a more farcical scene cannot be imagined. This, of course, ended all
idea of that young chanticleer being my Romeo; and yet the young rascal
was, or fancied he was, over head and ears in love at this very time,
and an exquisite sketch Hayter had just made of him might with the
utmost propriety have been sent to the exhibition with no other title
than "Portrait of a Lover."
The part of Romeo was given to Mr. Abbot, an old-established favorite
with the public, a very amiable and worthy man, old enough to have been
my father, whose performance, not certainly of the highest order, was
nevertheless not below inoffensive mediocrity. But the public, who were
bent upon doing more than justice to me, were less than just to him; and
the abuse showered upon his Romeo, especially by my more enthusiastic
admirers of the male sex, might, I should think, have embittered his
stage relations with me to the point of making me an object of
detestation to him, all through our theatrical lives. A tragicomic
incident was related to me by one of the parties concerned in it, which
certainly proved that poor Mr. Abbot was quite aware of the little favor
his Romeo found with my particular friends. One of them, the son of our
kind and valued friends the G----s, an excellent, good-hearted, but not
very wise young fellow, invariably occupied a certain favorite and
favorable position in the midst of the third row of the pit every night
that I acted. There were no stalls or reserved seats then, though not
long after I came out the majority of the seats in the orchestra were
let to spectators, and generally occupied by a set of young gentlemen
whom Sir Thomas Lawrence always designated as my "body guard." This,
however, had not yet been instituted, and my friend G---- had often to
wait long hours, and even to fight for the privilege of his peculiar
seat, where he rendered himself, I am sorry to say, not a little
ludicrous, and not seldom rather obnoxious to everybody in his vicinity,
by the vehement demonstrations of his enthusiasm--his frantic cries of
"bravo," his furious applause, and his irrepressible exclamations of
ecstasy and agony during the whole play. He became as familiar to the
public as the stage lamps themselves, and some of his immediate
neighbors complained rather bitterly of the incessant din and clatter of
his approbation, and the bruises, thumps, contusions, and constant fears
which his lively sentiments inflicted upon them. This _fanatico_ of
mine, walking home from the theater one night with two other like-minded
individuals, indulged himself in obstreperous abuse of poor Mr. Abbot,
in which he was heartily joined by his companions. Toward Cavendish
Square the broad, quiet streets rang with the uproarious mirth with
which they recapitulated his "damnable faces," "strange postures,"
uncouth gestures, and ungainly deportment; imitation followed imitation
of the poor actor's peculiar declamation, and the night became noisy
with the shouts of mingled derision and execration of his critics; when
suddenly, as they came to a gas-light at the corner of a crossing, a
solitary figure which had been preceding them, without possibility of
escape, down the long avenue of Harley Street, where G---- lived, turned
abruptly round, and confronted them with Mr. Abbot's unimpressive
countenance. "Gentlemen," he said, "no one can be more aware than myself
of the defects of my performance of Romeo, no one more conscious of its
entire unworthiness of Miss Kemble's Juliet; but all I can say is, that
I do not act the part by my own choice, and shall be delighted to resign
it to either of you who may feel more capable than I am of doing it
justice." The young gentlemen, though admiring me "not wisely, but too
well," were good-hearted fellows, and were struck with the manly and
moderate tone of Mr. Abbot's rebuke, and shocked at having
unintentionally wounded the feelings of a person who (except as Romeo),
was every way deserving of their respect. Of course they could not
swallow all their foolish words, and Abbot bowed and was gone before
they could stutter an apology. I have no doubt that his next appearance
as Romeo was hailed with some very cordial, remorseful applause,
addressed to him personally as some relief to their feelings, by my
indiscreet partisans. My friend G----, not very long after this
theatrical passion of his, became what is sometimes called "religious,"
and had thoughts of going into the Church, and giving up the play-house.
He confided to my mother, who was his mother's intimate friend, and of
whom he was very fond, his conscientious scruples, which she in no wise
combated; though she probably thought more moderation in going to the
theater, and a little more self-control when there, might not, in any
event, be undesirable changes in his practice, whether his taking holy
orders cut him off entirely from what was then his principal pleasure,
or not. One night, when the venerable Prebend of St. Paul's, her old
friend, Dr. Hughes, was in her box with her, witnessing my performance
(which my mother never failed to attend), she pointed out G----,
_scrimmaging_ about, as usual, in his wonted place in the pit, and said,
"There is a poor lad who is terribly disturbed in his own mind about the
very thing he is doing at this moment. He is thinking of going into the
Church, and more than half believes that he ought to give up coming to
the play." "That depends, I should say," replied dear old Dr. Hughes,
"upon his own conviction in the matter, and nothing else; meantime, pray
give him my compliments, and tell him _I_ have enjoyed the performance
to-night extremely."
Mr. Abbot was in truth not a bad actor, though a perfectly uninteresting
one in tragedy; he had a good figure, face, and voice, the carriage and
appearance of a well-bred person, and, in what is called genteel comedy,
precisely the air and manner which it is most difficult to assume, that
of a gentleman. He had been in the army, and had left it for the stage,
where his performances were always respectable, though seldom anything
more. Wanting passion and expression in tragedy, he naturally resorted
to vehemence to supply their place, and was exaggerated and violent from
the absence of all dramatic feeling and imagination. Moreover, in
moments of powerful emotion he was apt to become unsteady on his legs,
and always filled me with terror lest in some of his headlong runs and
rushes about the stage he should lose his balance and fall; as indeed he
once did, to my unspeakable distress, in the play of "The Grecian
Daughter," in which he enacted my husband, Phocion, and flying to
embrace me, after a period of painful and eventful separation, he
completely overbalanced himself, and swinging round with me in his arms,
we both came to the ground together. "Oh, Mr. Abbot!" was all I could
ejaculate; he, poor man, literally pale green with dismay, picked me up
in profound silence, and the audience kindly covered our confusion, and
comforted us by vehement applause, not, indeed, unmixed with laughter.
But my friends and admirers were none the more his after that exploit;
and I remained in mortal dread of his stage embraces for ever after,
steadying myself carefully on my feet, and bracing my whole figure to
"stand fast," whenever he made the smallest affectionate approach toward
me. It is not often that such a piece of awkwardness as this is
perpetrated on the stage, but dramatic heroines are nevertheless liable
to sundry disagreeable difficulties of a very unromantic nature. If a
gentleman in a ball-room places his hand round a lady's waist to waltz
with her, she can, without any shock to the "situation," beg him to
release the end spray of her flowery garland, or the floating ribbons of
her head-dress, which he may have imprisoned; but in the middle of a
scene of tragedy grief or horror, of the unreality of which, by dint of
the effort of your imagination, you are no longer conscious, to be
obliged to say, in your distraction, to your distracted partner in woe,
"Please lift your arm from my waist, you are pulling my head down
backwards," is a distraction, too, of its kind.
The only occasion on which I ever acted Juliet to a Romeo who looked the
part was one when Miss Ellen Tree sustained it. The acting of Romeo, or
any other man's part by a woman (in spite of Mrs. Siddons's Hamlet), is,
in my judgment, contrary to every artistic and perhaps natural
propriety, but I cannot deny that the stature "more than common tall,"
and the beautiful face, of which the fine features were too marked in
their classical regularity to look feeble or even effeminate, of my fair
female lover made her physically an appropriate representative of Romeo.
Miss Ellen Tree looked beautiful and not unmanly in the part; she was
broad-shouldered as well as tall, and her long limbs had the fine
proportions of the huntress Diana; altogether, she made a very "pretty
fellow," as the saying was formerly, as all who saw her in her graceful
performance of Talfourd's "Ion" will testify; but assumption of that
character, which in its ideal classical purity is almost without sex,
was less open to objection than that of the fighting young Veronese
noble of the fourteenth century. She fenced very well, however, and
acquitted herself quite manfully in her duel with Tybalt; the only hitch
in the usual "business" of the part was between herself and me, and I do
not imagine the public, for one night, were much aggrieved by the
omission of the usual clap-trap performance (part of Garrick's
interpolation, which indeed belongs to the original story, but which
Shakespeare's true poet's sense had discarded) of Romeo's plucking
Juliet up from her bier and rushing with her, still stiff and motionless
in her death-trance, down to the foot-lights. This feat Miss Tree
insisted upon attempting with me, and I as stoutly resisted all her
entreaties to let her do so. I was a very slender-looking girl, but very
heavy for all that. (A friend of mine, on my first voyage to America,
lifting me from a small height, set me down upon the deck, exclaiming,
"Oh, you solid little lady!" and my cousin, John Mason, the first time
he acted Romeo with me, though a very powerful, muscular young man,
whispered to me as he carried my corpse down the stage with a fine
semblance of frenzy, "Jove, Fanny, you are a lift!") Finding that all
argument and remonstrance was unavailing, and that Miss Tree, though by
no means other than a good friend and fellow-worker of mine, was bent
upon performing this gymnastic feat, I said at last, "If you attempt to
lift or carry me down the stage, I will kick and scream till you set me
down," which ended the controversy. I do not know whether she believed
me, but she did not venture upon the experiment.
I am reminded by this recollection of my pleasant professional
fellowship with Miss Ellen Tree of a curious instance of the
unprincipled, flagrant recklessness with which scandalous gossip is
received and circulated in what calls itself the best English society.
In Mr. Charles Greville's "Memoirs," he makes a statement that Miss Tree
was never engaged at Covent Garden. The play-bills and the newspapers of
the day abundantly contradicted this assertion (at the time he entered
it in his diary), and, of course, the discreditable motive assigned for
the _fact_.
I cannot help thinking that, had Mr. Greville lived, much of the
voluminous record he kept of persons and events would have been withheld
from publication. He told me, not long before his death, that he had no
recollection whatever of the contents of the earlier volumes of his MS.
journal which he had lent me to read; and it is infinitely to be
regretted, if he did not look over them before they were published, that
the discretion he exercised (or delegated) in the omission of certain
passages was not allowed to prevail to the exclusion of others. Such
partial omissions would not indeed alter the whole tone and character of
the book, but might have mitigated the shock of painful surprise with
which it was received by the society he described, and by no one more
than some of those who had been on terms of the friendliest intimacy
with him and who had repeatedly heard him assert that his journal would
never be published in the lifetime of any one mentioned in it.
I consider that I was quite justified in using even this naughty child's
threat to prevent Miss Tree from doing what might very well have ended
in some dangerous and ludicrous accident; nor did I feel at all guilty
toward her of the species of malice prepense which Malibran exhibited
toward Sontag, when they sang in the opera of "Romeo and Juliet," on the
first occasion of their appearing together during their brilliant public
career in England. Malibran's mischievousness partook of the force and
versatility of her extraordinary genius, and having tormented poor
Mademoiselle Sontag with every inconceivable freak and caprice during
the whole rehearsal of the opera, at length, when requested by her to
say in what part of the stage she intended to fall in the last scene,
she, Malibran, replied that she "really didn't know," that she "really
couldn't tell;" sometimes she "died in one place, sometimes in another,
just as it happened, or the humor took her at the moment." As Sontag was
bound to expire in loving proximity to her, and was, I take it, much
less liable to spontaneous inspiration than her fiery rival, this was by
no means satisfactory. She had nothing like the original genius of the
other woman, but was nevertheless a more perfect artist. Wanting weight
and power and passion for such parts as Norma, Medea, Semiramide, etc.,
she was perfect in the tenderer and more pathetic parts of Amina, Lucia
di Lammermoor, Linda di Chamouni; exquisite in the Rosina and Carolina
of the "Barbiere" and "Matrimonio Segreto;" and, in my opinion, quite
unrivaled in her Countess, in the "Nozze," and, indeed, in all rendering
of Mozart's music, to whose peculiar and pre-eminent genius hers seemed
to me in some degree allied, and of whose works she was the only
interpreter I ever heard, gifted alike with the profound German
understanding of music and the enchanting Italian power of rendering it.
Her mode of uttering sound, of putting forth her voice (the test which
all but Italians, or most carefully Italian-trained singers, fail in),
was as purely unteutonic as possible. She was one of the most perfect
singers I ever heard, and suggests to my memory the quaint praise of the
gypsy vocal performance in the ballad of "Johnny Faa"--
"They sang so sweet,
So very _complete_,"
She was the first Rosina I ever heard who introduced into the scene of
the music-lesson "Rhodes Air," with the famous violin variations, which
she performed by way of a _vocalise_, to the utter amazement of her
noble music-master, I should think, as well as her audience.
Mademoiselle Nilsson is the only prima donna since her day who has at
all reminded me of Sontag, who was lovely to look at, delightful to
listen to, good, amiable, and charming, and, compared with Malibran,
like the evening star to a comet.
Defeated by Malibran's viciousness in rehearsing her death-scene, she
resigned herself to the impromptu imposed upon her, and prepared to
follow her Romeo, wherever _she_ might choose to die; but when the
evening came, Malibran contrived to die close to the foot-lights and in
front of the curtain; Sontag of necessity followed, and fell beside her
there; the drop came down, and there lay the two fair corpses in full
view of the audience, of course unable to rise or move, till a couple of
stage footmen, in red plush breeches, ran in to the rescue, took the
dead Capulet and Montague each by the shoulders, and dragged them off at
the side scenes; the Spanish woman in the heroism of her maliciousness
submitting to this ignominy for the pleasure of subjecting her gentle
German rival to it.
Madame Malibran was always an object of the greatest interest to me, not
only on account of her extraordinary genius, and great and various
gifts, but because of the many details I heard of her youth from M. de
la Forest, the French consul in New York, who knew her as Marie Garcia,
a wild and wayward but most wonderful girl, under her father's
tyrannical and harsh rule during the time they spent in the United
States. He said that there was not a piece of furniture in their
apartment that had not been thrown by the father at the daughter's head,
in the course of the moral and artistic training he bestowed upon her:
it is perhaps wonderful that success in either direction should have
been the result of such a system; but, upon the whole, the singer seems
to have profited more than the woman from it, as might have been
expected. Garcia was an incomparable artist, actor, and singer (no such
Don Giovanni has ever been heard or seen since), and bestowed upon all
his children the finest musical education that ever made great natural
gifts available to the utmost to their possessors. I suppose it was from
him, too, that Marie derived with her Spanish blood the vehement,
uncontrollable nature of which M. de la Forest told me he had witnessed
such extraordinary exhibitions in her girlhood. He said she would fly
into passions of rage, in which she would set her teeth in the sleeve of
her silk gown, and tear and rend great pieces out of the thick texture
as if it were muslin; a test of the strength of those beautiful teeth,
as well as of the fury of her passion. She then would fall rigid on the
floor, without motion, breath, pulse, or color, though not fainting, in
a sort of catalepsy of rage.
Her marriage with the old French merchant Malibran was speedily followed
by their separation; he went to France, leaving his divine devil of a
wife in New York, and during his absence she used to write letters to
him, which she frequently showed to M. de la Forest, who was her
intimate friend and adviser, and took a paternal interest in all her
affairs. These epistles often expressed so much cordial kindness and
warmth of feeling toward her husband, that M. de la Forest, who knew her
separation from him to have been entirely her own act and choice, and
any decent agreement and harmonious life between them absolutely
impossible, was completely puzzled by such professions toward a man with
whom she was determined never to live, and occasionally said to her,
"What do you mean? Do you wish your husband to come here to you? or do
you contemplate going to him? In short, what is your intention in
writing with all this affection to a man from whom you have separated
yourself?" Upon this view of her epistle, which did not appear to have
struck her, M. de la Forest said, she would (instead of rewriting it)
tack on to it, with the most ludicrous inconsistency, a sort of
revocatory codicil, in the shape of a postscript, expressing her decided
desire that her husband should remain where he was, and her own explicit
determination never again to enter into any more intimate relations with
him than were compatible with a correspondence from opposite sides of
the Atlantic, whatever personal regard or affection for him her letter
might appear to express to the contrary notwithstanding.
To my great regret I only saw her act once, though I heard her sing at
concerts and in private repeatedly. My only personal encounter with her
took place in a curious fashion. My father and myself were acting at
Manchester, and had just finished performing the parts of Mr. and Mrs.
Beverley, one night, in "The Gamester." On our return from the theater,
as I was slowly and in considerable exhaustion following my father up
the hotel stairs, as we reached the landing by our sitting-room, a door
immediately opposite to it flew open, and a lady dressed like
Tilburina's Confidante, all in white muslin, rushed out of it, and fell
upon my father's breast, sobbing out hysterically, "Oh, Mr. Kembel, my
deare, deare Mr. Kembel!" This was Madame Malibran, under the effect of
my father's performance of the Gamester, which she had just witnessed.
"Come, come," quoth my father (who was old enough to have been hers, and
knew her very well), patting her consolingly on the back, "Come now, my
dear Madame Malibran, compose yourself; don't now, Marie, don't, my dear
child!" all which was taking place on the public staircase, while I
looked on in wide-eyed amazement behind. Madame Malibran, having
suffered herself to be led into our room, gradually composed herself,
ate her supper with us, expressed herself with much kind enthusiasm
about my performance, and gave me a word of advice as to not losing any
of my height (of which I had none to spare) by stooping, saying very
amiably that, being at a disadvantage as to her own stature, she had
never wasted a quarter of an inch of it. This little reflection upon her
own proportions must have been meant as a panacea to my vanity for her
criticism of my deportment. My person was indeed of the shortest; but
she had the figure of a nymph, and was rather above than below middle
height. There was in other respects some likeness between us; she was
certainly not really handsome, but her eyes were magnificent, and her
whole countenance was very striking.
The first time I ever saw her sister, Madame Viardot, she was sitting
with mine, who introduced me to her; Pauline Viardot continued talking,
now and then, however, stopping to look fixedly at me, and at last
exclaimed, "Mais comme elle ressemble à ma Marie!" and one evening at a
private concert in London, having arrived late, I remained standing by
the folding-doors of the drawing-room, while Lablache finished a song
which he had begun before I came in, at the end of which he came up to
me and said, "You cannot think how you frightened me, when first I saw
you standing in that doorway; you looked so absolutely like Malibran,
que je ne savais en vérité pas ce que c'était." Malibran's appearance
was a memorable event in the whole musical world of Europe, throughout
which her progress from capital to capital was one uninterrupted
triumph; the enthusiasm, as is general in such cases, growing with its
further and wider spread, so that at Venice she was allowed, in spite of
old-established law and custom, to go about in a gold and crimson
gondola, as fine as the Bucentaur itself, instead of the floating
hearses that haunt the sea-paved thoroughfares, and that did not please
her gay and magnificent taste.
Her _début_ in England was an absolute conquest of the nation; and when
it was shocked by the news of her untimely death, hundreds of those
unsympathetic, unæsthetic, unenthusiastic English people put mourning on
for the wonderfully gifted young woman, snatched away in the midst of
her brilliant career. Madame Malibran composed some charming songs, but
her great reputation derives little of its luster from them,--that great
reputation already a mere tradition.
At a challenge I would not decline, I ventured upon the following harsh
and ungraceful but literal translation of some of the stanzas from
Alfred de Musset's fine lament for Malibran. My poetical competitor
produced an admirable version of them, and has achieved translations of
other of his verses, as perfect as translations can be; a literary feat
of extraordinary difficulty, with the works of so essentially national a
writer, a genius so peculiarly French, as De Musset.
"Oh, Maria Felicia! the painter and bard
Behind them, in dying, leave undying heirs.
The night of oblivion their memory spares,
And their great eager souls, other action debarred,
Against death, against time, having valiantly warred,
Though struck down in the strife, claim its trophies as theirs.
"In the iron engraved, one his thought leaves enshrined;
With a golden-sweet cadence another's entwined
Makes for ever all those who shall hear it his friends.
Though he died, on the canvas lives Raphael's mind;
And from death's darkest doom till this world of ours ends,
The mother-clasped infant his glory defends.
"As the lamp guards the flame, so the bare, marble halls
Of the Parthenon keep, in their desolate space,
The memory of Phidias enshrined in their walls.
And Praxiteles' child, the young Venus, yet calls
From the altar, where, smiling, she still holds her place,
The centuries conquered to worship her grace.
"Thus from age after age, while new life they receive,
To rest at God's feet the old glories are gone;
And the accents of genius their echoes still weave
With the great human voice, till their speech is but one.
And of thee, dead but yesterday, all thy fame leaves
But a cross in the dim chapel's darkness, alone.
"A cross and oblivion, silence, and death!
Hark! the wind's softest sob; hark! the ocean's deep breath!
Hark! the fisher boy singing his way o'er the plains!
Of thy glory, thy hope, thy young beauty's bright wreath,
Not a trace, not a sigh, not an echo remains."
Those Garcia sisters were among the most remarkable people of their day,
not only for their peculiar high artistic gifts, their admirable musical
and dramatic powers, but for the vivid originality of their genius and
great general cultivation. Malibran danced almost as well as she sang,
and once took a principal part in a ballet. She drew and painted well,
as did her sister Pauline Viardot, whose spirited caricatures of her
friends, and herself were admirable specimens both of likenesses and of
humorous talent in delineating them. Both sisters conversed brilliantly,
speaking fluently four languages, and executed the music of different
nations and composers with a perception of the peculiar character of
each that was extraordinary. They were mistresses of all the different
schools of religious, dramatic, and national compositions, and Gluck,
Jomelli, Pergolesi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini,
Scotch and Irish melodies, Neapolitan canzonette, and the popular airs
of their own country, were all rendered by them with equal mastery.
To resume my story (which is very like that of the knife-grinder). When
I returned to the stage, many years after I had first appeared on it, I
restored the beautiful end of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" as he
wrote it (in spite of Garrick and the original story), thinking it mere
profanation to intrude sharp discords of piercing agony into the divine
harmony of woe with which it closes.
"Thus with a kiss I die,"
"Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead,"
are full enough of bitter-sweet despair for the last chords of that
ineffable, passionate strain--the swoon of sorrow ending that brief,
palpitating ecstasy, the proper, dirge-like close to that triumphant
hymn of love and youth and beauty. All the frantic rushing and tortured
writhing and uproar of noisy anguish of the usual stage ending seemed
utter desecration to me; but Garrick was an actor, the first of actors,
and his death-scene of the lovers and ending of the play is much more
theatrically effective than Shakespeare's.
The report of my approaching appearance on the stage excited a good deal
of interest among the acquaintances and friends of my family, and
occasioned a renewal of cordial relations which had formerly existed,
but ceased for some time, between Sir Thomas Lawrence and my father and
mother.
Lawrence's enthusiastic admiration for my uncle John and Mrs. Siddons,
testified by the numerous striking portraits in which he has recorded
their personal beauty and dramatic picturesqueness, led to a most
intimate and close friendship between the great painter and the eminent
actors, and, subsequently, to very painful circumstances, which
estranged him for years from all our family, and forbade all renewal of
the relations between himself and Mrs. Siddons which had been so cruelly
interrupted.
While frequenting her house upon terms of the most affectionate
intimacy, he proposed to her eldest daughter, my cousin Sarah, and was
accepted by her. Before long, however, he became deeply dejected, moody,
restless, and evidently extremely and unaccountably wretched. Violent
scenes of the most painful emotion, of which the cause was inexplicable
and incomprehensible, took place repeatedly between himself and Mrs.
Siddons, to whom he finally, in a paroxysm of self-abandoned misery,
confessed that he had mistaken his own feelings, and that her younger
daughter, and not the elder, was the real object of his affection, and
ended by imploring permission to transfer his addresses from the one to
the other sister. How this extraordinary change was accomplished I know
not; but only that it took place, and that Maria Siddons became engaged
to her sister's faithless lover. To neither of them, however was he
destined ever to be united; they were both exceedingly delicate young
women, with a tendency to consumption, which was probably developed and
accelerated in its progress in no small measure by all the bitterness
and complicated difficulties of this disastrous double courtship.
Maria, the youngest, an exceedingly beautiful girl, died first, and on
her death-bed exacted from her sister a promise that she would never
become Lawrence's wife; the promise was given, and she died, and had not
lain long in her untimely grave when her sister was laid in it beside
her. The death of these two lovely and amiable women broke off all
connection between Sir Thomas Lawrence and my aunt, and from that time
they never saw or had any intercourse with each other.