“DAVEY.”
“Have you ever heard,” asked Garrick, in an unpublished letter to Moody,
then at Liverpool, “of a woman Siddons, who is strolling about somewhere
near you?” Four months later, by the help of the Rev. Henry Bate’s
favourable report of her powers, she made her first appearance at Drury
Lane. The Golden Gates of the Temple of Fame were thrown open. The young
priestess had but to enter, one would have thought, and light the sacred
flame; but genius is not to be bound by expediency or opportunity.
It was in 1775, the year when Garrick gave up the management, that Mrs.
Siddons appeared on the boards of Drury Lane. She had reached the highest
point of her ambition—she was to act with the greatest actor of his time
before a dramatic audience rendered fastidious and critical by great
traditions.
This is the most unfortunate portion of her life to recount. Failure
and disappointment attended every step she made; and this failure and
disappointment, although it did not in the least discourage her in the
prosecution of her art, hurried her into bitterness and an unjust feeling
of rancour against Garrick, which an examination of the circumstances of
the case in no way warrants. One of the Kemble weaknesses was a proud
sensitiveness to anything like slight or neglect, and these slights were
as often as not phantoms of their own imaginations.
It gives one a mournful sense of injustice to see the charge of jealousy
she openly brings repeated by the earlier biographer who wrote about
her—when we, who have fuller light thrown upon the great actor’s life
by the publication of his correspondence, know how free he was from the
besetting sins of his craft. To be popular, a man must have the faults
of those among whom he is placed. Garrick was called stingy because he
did not throw away his money like his colleagues; stiff, because he was a
moral man amidst a laxity of manners that has become proverbial; jealous,
because he placed the honour of his art and his theatre above personal
considerations. He was an object of envy because of his unparalleled
success. The two clouds which veiled the nobility of his character—love
of money and love of fine friends—vanished like mists in the sunshine if
he were really called upon to help a case of distress or take notice of
an old friend. These faults were harped upon, however, by Johnson, Foote,
and hosts of others. Well might Garrick, in the evening of his days,
sitting on the terrace of his house at Twickenham, make the, for him,
bitter observation, “I have not always met gratitude in a play-house.”
It was at the time, no doubt, a salve to Mrs. Siddons’s disappointment to
listen to the specious Mr. Sheridan’s insinuation of Garrick’s jealousy;
but it is a curious fact, if Sheridan were sincere in his statements,
that when he succeeded Garrick as manager he never endeavoured to
re-engage her; indeed, on the contrary, abruptly and discourteously
closed all negotiations and cancelled all agreements made both with the
actress and her husband for a reappearance at Drury Lane.
We will allow the reader, however, to judge the story upon its own merits.
After the favourable reports of King and Bate, Garrick, as we have seen
by the Bate letters, engaged Mrs. Siddons and her husband. The energy
that afterwards distinguished her to such an extraordinary extent was now
exhibited.
Although not at all strong—her eldest girl, and second child, as we have
seen, having only been born on the 5th of November 1775—in the beginning
of December she began making preparations for her journey to London, no
joke in those days when, “starting two hours before day, or as late at
night,” it took three days to reach Bristol.
Five days, Mrs. Delaney tells us, travelling over the same road the
Siddons had now to face, it took to reach her father’s place in
Gloucestershire. “Every half hour flop we went into a slough, not
overturned, but stuck. Out we were hauled, and the coach with much
difficulty was set up again.”
Full of hope and excitement, however, the young actress, accompanied by
husband and babies, prepared for their expedition. No pilgrim approaching
the shrine of Mecca was ever more enthusiastic than she approaching the
bourne of all actors of that day, Drury Lane. Yet already, through all
her delight, we hear a note of dissatisfaction that is displeasing.
Garrick had arranged to give her five pounds a week, a munificent salary
for a beginner in those days. Mrs. Abington and Mrs. Yates only received
ten. She had heard the charge of stinginess made against him, and,
parrot-like, repeated it, without really considering if in her own case
it were true.
We will relate the story, however, in her own words, taken from
Recollections written many years after, but full of as much bitterness as
though penned while still smarting under her reverse.
“Happy to be placed where I presumptuously augured that I should do all
that I have since achieved, if I could but once gain the opportunity,
I instantly paid my respects to the great man. I was at that time
good-looking; and certainly, all things considered, an actress well
worth my poor five pounds a week. His praises were most liberally
conferred upon me.” We are told by Campbell that he complimented her in
this interview for not having the regular “tie-tum-tie” or sing-song of
the provincial actress. “But,” she goes on, “his attentions, great and
unremitting as they were, ended in worse than nothing. How was all this
admiration to be accounted for consistently with his subsequent conduct?
Why, thus, I believe: he was retiring from the management of Drury Lane,
and, I suppose, at that time wished to wash his hands of all its concerns
and details. However this may be, he always objected to my appearance
in any very prominent character, telling me that Mrs. Yates and Miss
Young would poison me if I did. I, of course, thought him not only an
oracle but my friend; and, in consequence of his advice, Portia, in the
_Merchant of Venice_, was fixed upon for my _début_, a character in which
it was not likely that I should excite any great sensation. _I was,
therefore, merely tolerated._”
We here beg to mention that it can hardly be correct that Mrs. Siddons
thought she would make no impression in Portia, as she had underlined
Portia in the list she gave Mr. Bate of her favourite parts, and we find
her choosing it later as the character in which to appear before Horace
Walpole when desirous of propitiating the pitiless critic. But we will
continue to relate the unfortunate story of this period in her own words.
“The fulsome adulation that courted Garrick in the theatre cannot be
imagined; and whosoever was the luckless wight who should be honoured by
his distinguished and envied smiles, of course, became an object of spite
and malevolence. Little did I imagine that I myself was now that wretched
victim. He would sometimes hand me from my own seat in the green-room
to place me next to his own.... He also,” she goes on, “selected me to
personate Venus at the revival of the _Jubilee_. This gained me the
malicious appellation of Garrick’s ‘Venus,’ and the ladies who so kindly
bestowed it on me rushed before me in the last scene, so that if he
(Mr. Garrick) had not brought us forward with him with his own hands,
my little Cupid and myself, whose appointed situations were in the very
front of the stage, might have as well been in the Island of Paphos at
that moment.”
Thomas Dibdin, the Cupid on this occasion, afterwards told Campbell that,
as it was necessary for him to smile in the part of his godship, Mrs.
Siddons kept him in good humour by asking him what sort of sugar-plums
he liked best, and promising him a large supply of them. After the
performance she kept her word. This is a characteristic trait; most young
actresses under the circumstances would have been rather occupied with
the effect of their own beauty on the audience than of the smiles of
their Cupids.
At last the day came on which her fate was to be decided. It fell in
Christmas week, 1775, and the audience present is described as “numerous
and splendid.”
The following is a copy of the play-bill:—
(Not acted these two years.)
By Her Majesty’s Company at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.
This day will be performed
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
Shylock Mr. KING.
Antonio Mr. REDDISH.
Gratiano Mr. DODD.
Lorenzo (with songs) Mr. VERNON.
&c. &c.
Then Jessica (with a song) Miss JARRETT.
Nerissa Mrs. DAVIES.
Portia, by a Young Lady (her first appearance).
The result can best be known by the judgment of the newspaper critics.
One says: “On before us tottered rather than walked a very pretty,
delicate, fragile-looking young creature, dressed in a most unbecoming
manner, in a faded salmon-coloured sack and coat, and uncertain
whereabouts to fix either her eyes or her feet. She spoke in broken,
tremulous tones; and at the close of each sentence her voice sank into
a ‘horrid whisper’ that was almost inaudible. After her first exit, the
judgment of the pit was unanimous as to her beauty, but declared her
awkward and provincial.”
In the famous Trial scene she regained her courage, and delivered the
great speech to Shylock with “critical propriety,” but with a faintness
of utterance which seemed the result of physical weakness rather than of
want of spirit or feeling. Another paper, who “understood that the new
Portia had been the heroine of one of those petty parties of travelling
comedians which wander over the country,” owned that she had a fine
stage-figure; her features were expressive; she was uncommonly graceful;
but her voice was deficient in variety of tone and clearness. This,
however, might be the effect of a cold or nervousness. Her words were
delivered with good sense and taste, only there was no fire or spirit
in the performance. “Nothing,” the critic ends, “is so barren of either
profit or fame as a cold correctness.”
Knowing the Kemble failing of over-study and self-restraint, this seems a
fair enough criticism. She represented Portia again a few nights later,
but her name did not appear on the bills. She showed more confidence, and
succeeded a little better, but does not seem to have got a hold of her
audience.
Garrick was at this time employed in mounting an abridgment by
Colman of Ben Jonson’s _Epicœne_, and trusting, we conclude, to the
statement of his friend Mr. Bate, that the _débutante_ had “a very good
breeches-figure,” he selected her for the heroine’s part. The result
was a failure. Critics complained of “the confusion, when Mrs. Siddons,
disguised in the piece as a woman, revealed herself at the end as a boy.”
The _Morning Post_, edited by Parson Bate, was the only paper that spoke
in favour of the attempt.
The next part she was put into was by this same Bate, _The Blackamoor
White-washed_. We can see how Garrick was forced by the exigencies of
his obligations to Bate to put this play on the stage; the only mistake
he made was in subjecting the young actress to the risks and chances
of the first representation, which, in consequence of the slashing pen
and vigorous fists of its author, was not likely to be received with
unalloyed approbation. Unfortunately he did not understand the proud
timidity of the girl on whom he had laid the task. His other ladies did
not mind a rebuff, and would do anything for a critic who praised them,
as Mr. Bate had praised “Portia.” As to a theatrical riot, they rather
enjoyed it than otherwise, if it were not turned against them personally.
Though treated to many a one afterwards, Mrs. Siddons never forgot this
first experience. A band of prize-fighters, supposed to be supporters
of the parson’s, burst into the pit, and, striking out right and left,
silenced the would-be detractors of the play. On the next night both
sides mustered in force, and the scene defied description. Officers in
the boxes fought with gentlemen from the pit and galleries. The ladies
were driven from the boxes, leaving them in possession of the combatants.
Garrick, who appeared to try and appease the mob, had an orange flung
at him, and a lighted candle passed close to King, who came from the
author to announce the withdrawal of the piece. Even this statement had
not the effect of restoring quiet until past midnight, when, weary with
their exertions, the rioters dispersed. Next day all the papers abused
the Julia of the piece, who had not been allowed a chance of making
herself heard. “Mrs. Siddons, having no comedy in her nature,” one said,
“rendered that ridiculous which the author evidently intended to be
pleasant.”
On the 15th of February, Garrick again allowed her to appear; this time
in Mrs. Cowley’s _Runaway_—a slight but telling part, which caused one
of her critics to say that she dropped into the walking gentlewoman, and
was not permitted a long walk before she became the “Runaway.” Garrick
then paid her the compliment of entrusting her with the acting of Mrs.
Strickland to his Ranger in the old comedy of _The Suspicious Husband_.
One lady confesses to being moved to tears by Mrs. Siddons in this part,
but the majority of the audience and the newspapers seem to have passed
her over in complete silence.
Garrick now began his farewell performances. He selected her to act the
Lady Anne to his Richard III.—a selection which was an honour coveted by
most of the ladies of the company. The actor surpassed his finest days;
the young actress was almost petrified by the ferocity and fire of his
gaze. She forgot, in her flurry, his important order that she should
stand so that _his_ face might be presented to the audience. The look she
received made her almost faint with terror, and no doubt betrayed her
fright in her acting. The critics pronounced that she was “lamentable,”
and the public were utterly indifferent. This was her last appearance.
And so ended her first disastrous season at Drury Lane. We think every
unbiassed person in reading the account of it will entirely absolve
Garrick of the charges brought against him. Other causes were at work
which the offended actress did not take into consideration.
Garrick could not forgive crudeness, want of finish. He himself had
stepped on the London stage with as much natural ease, and in his
representation of Richard III. had taken the town as completely by storm
the first time as the last time he acted it. He never made allowances for
timidity, and grew impatient at want of confidence. We know he utterly
despaired of Mrs. Graham, afterwards the great Mrs. Yates, when he
first saw her in the part of Marcia; and Miss Barton, afterwards Mrs.
Abington, he allowed to leave Drury Lane at first because he could not,
he said, give her a fitting part. The Kemble genius, on the other hand,
was a plant of tardy growth, needing much cultivation and many years to
bring it to perfection.
Garrick was above all a manager who had the honour of his theatre at
heart. He had held the helm at Drury Lane for years, guiding the fortunes
of the company through stormy waters safely into the haven of financial
and artistic success such as no theatre had ever enjoyed before; but at
what a cost! Tormented by the jealousies, insolence, and greed of his
leading ladies, disheartened by the envy and treachery of his oldest
friends, he must have been glad to contemplate retirement from the
turmoil, to enjoy undisturbed the competency he had been able to save
from a long life spent in the service of his art and the public. He had
but one year more of thraldom, but the harness had begun to gall almost
beyond endurance. When he came home ill and worn out after protracted
rehearsals, he found petulant letters to be answered, when he went back
to the theatre hostile attacks to be avoided, while outside were ranged
secret and declared foes, jealous of his success, anxious to find a flaw
in his honour or his genius. Suddenly he bethought him of a method, tried
before with success, to curb the fiery tempers of the ladies within “his
kingdom.” He had heard of a lovely young actress, member of a company
strolling in the provinces. He determined to engage her and use her as
a foil against the rebellious members of his female staff, for the last
year of office. It was not likely that, coming from humble surroundings
and hard work, she would afflict him with many airs and graces; and
before time had been given her to spoil, his term as manager would have
ceased. Garrick had never been given much cause to think highly of women
during his long life as an actor—his own wife always excepted—and he
most likely put Sarah Siddons on the same level as the others—sordid,
like Miss Pope; jealous, like Mrs. Yates; or ill-tempered, like Mrs.
Clive—well able to take care of herself, and not gifted with those two
rare qualities amongst theatrical ladies, modesty or sensitiveness. How
could he guess, even with all his perspicacity and experience, that this
young creature—whose life hitherto had been spent strolling from place
to place with the vagabonds and adventurers her profession threw her
with—was proud, sensitive, timid, nourishing the very highest ideal of
her art, and indifferent to any homage given to her person and not to her
intellectual power of interpreting the works of the great poets of her
country? How could he tell that beneath the pretty exterior of this young
and trembling recruit lay hidden the fiery soul of the majestic, terrific
Lady Macbeth? He treated her with an amount of consideration and courtesy
unusual even with him, sending her boxes for all his great performances,
when Cabinet Ministers were imploring places and had to be refused. He
would hand her from the green-room and put her in the place of honour
beside him; and gave her parts which according to his judgment, formed
hastily on what he had had an opportunity of seeing, best suited her. And
how was he rewarded? By a resentment nourished the whole of a lifetime,
and by a charge persistently stated and repeated by her friends, that the
great “Roscius” was jealous of an unskilled, untrained, country actress!
Why, then, had he not shown jealousy of Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Clive, or,
still more, of the gentlemen of his company, Barry and Smith, the Romeo
and Charles Surface of their day. There are so few figures in public
life complete and admirable as David Garrick’s, so far removed above
the pettiness and egotism accompanying success, that it is with pain we
read Mrs. Siddons’s accusations, and think the only way to excuse her is
to show the anguish experienced by both her husband and herself in the
miserable sequel to the sad story of failure and disappointment, and to
ascribe her injustice to the misery of lives embittered and prospects
blighted, for the time, making her ever afterwards see the facts of the
case through a distorted medium. We will relate in her own words what now
took place:—
“He (Garrick) promised Mr. Siddons to procure me a good engagement with
the new managers, and desired him to give himself no trouble about the
matter, but to put my cause entirely into his hands. He let me down,
however, after all these protestations, in the most humiliating manner,
and, instead of doing me common justice with those gentlemen, rather
depreciated my talents. This Mr. Sheridan afterwards told me; and said
that when Mrs. Abington heard of my impending dismissal, she told them
they were all acting like fools. When the London season was over, I made
an engagement at Birmingham for the ensuing summer, little doubting of my
return to Drury Lane for the next winter; but, whilst I was fulfilling my
engagement at Birmingham, to my utter dismay and astonishment, I received
an official letter from the prompter of Drury Lane, acquainting me that
my services would be no longer required. It was a stunning and cruel
blow, overwhelming all my ambitious hopes, and involving peril even to
the subsistence of my helpless babes. It was very near destroying me. My
blighted prospects, indeed, induced a state of mind that preyed upon my
health, and for a year and a half I was supposed to be hastening to a
decline. For the sake of my poor children, however, I roused myself to
shake off this despondency, and my endeavours were blest with success,
_in spite of the degradation I had suffered in being banished from Drury
Lane as a worthless candidate for fame and fortune_.”
Siddons wrote piteously to Garrick on the 9th of February 1776,
soliciting his “friendship” and “endeavour” for their continuance in
Drury Lane. “I account we have been doubly unfortunate at our onset
in the theatre, first that particular circumstances prevented us from
joining it at a proper time, and thereby rendered it impossible for us
to be mingled in the business of the season, where our utility might
have been more observed; second, that we are going to be deprived of you
as manager, and left to those who, perhaps, may not have an opportunity
this winter of observing us at all: these considerations, Sir, have
occasioned this address, with hopes you will lay them before Mr. Lacy and
those gentlemen your successors; and as there has been no agreement with
regard to salary between you and us, it may now be necessary to propose
that article, thereby to acquaint them with what we shall expect, which
(as we are so young in the theatre) is no more than what we can decently
subsist on and appear with some credit to the profession. That is, for
Mrs. Siddons three pounds a week, for myself two; this, I flatter myself,
we shall both be found worthy of for the first year; after that (as it
may be presumed we shall be more experienced in our business) shall wish
to rise as our merits may demand. I am, Sir, with many apologies for this
freedom, your most obedient and very humble servant, WM. SIDDONS.”
It shows how disastrous the effect of her acting must have been that, in
spite of the smallness of their demands, Lacy, Sheridan & Co. refused to
entertain their proposal.
It is a curious fact, if, as she says, the treatment she received at
Garrick’s hands was unjust, that at this juncture the managers of the
rival theatre of Covent Garden, who had already been in treaty with her,
and thought themselves unhandsomely dealt with when Garrick secured her,
did not come forward now. It is clear that the anxiety of the Covent
Garden managers for her assistance was extinguished by her performance;
those talents which they were ready before her appearance to contest with
Garrick, they subsequently resigned without an effort to the obscurity
of a strolling company. We have a curious corollary to her statement,
“that Mrs. Abington told them they were all acting like fools,” in the
lately published Memoirs of Crabbe Robinson, in which he relates a
conversation he held in 1811 with Mrs. Abington on the subject of Mrs.
Siddons. She was by no means warm, he says, in her praise. She objected
to the elaborate emphasis given to very insignificant words. “That was
brought in by them,” she added, with truth, alluding to the weakness of
the family. Perhaps the fair Abington’s praise at first was as conclusive
a sign of failure as Sheridan’s dismissal.
Good-natured Pivey Clive was more honest in saying nothing at the time;
but on going with Mrs. Garrick to see her later, when she was in the
heyday of her success, she pronounced the young actress, in her own
characteristic fashion, to be “all truth and daylight.”
We never hear Garrick’s name mentioned again with hers, except in a note
in connection with two folio Shakespeares of 1623. “In 1776,” Payne
Collier says, “Garrick had presented the volume (one of the folio copies
with the autographs of David Garrick and Sarah Siddons) to Mrs. Siddons
as a testimony of her merits, and of his obligation.” So far Payne
Collier. Another writer, commenting on this note, demonstrates that it
is not likely that Garrick presented so great a treasure as the folio
Shakespeare of 1623 to Mrs. Siddons, especially as the words “a testimony
of her merits and his obligation” was an addition of Payne Collier. He
then relates the circumstances of her first appearance. Garrick, he says,
amongst other things, noticed some awkward action of her arms, and said
“if she waved them about in that fashion she would knock off his wig,”
upon which she retorted to the person who told her, “He was only afraid I
should overshadow his nose.” A mutual feeling not likely to lead to such
a gift. It would be interesting, therefore, to know through what hands
the volume passed from Garrick to Mrs. Siddons, and from Mrs. Siddons
to Lilly the bookseller. With the great actor’s wife she was afterwards
on terms of friendship; and when Mrs. Garrick died, she left her in her
will a pair of gloves which were Shakespeare’s, “and were presented
to my late dear husband by one of the family during the Jubilee at
Stratford-on-Avon.” And so “Davey” vanishes from her life.