SORROWS.
Though still suffering from enfeebled health, Mrs. Siddons again made up
her mind to visit Dublin in the spring of 1802. A strange depression,
partly the result of physical weakness, and partly the result of mental
anxiety, came over her courageous spirit, paralysing all energy, and
breaking down her usual calm composure. We find this woman, who to the
outside public presented a cold and hard exterior, weeping hysterically
on taking leave of her friends. She told Mr. Greatheed she felt that
before they met again a great affliction would have fallen on them both.
They never did meet till after the death of his son Bertie and her
daughter Sarah. To Mrs. Piozzi she wrote:—
“May 1802.
“Farewell, my beloved friend—a long, long farewell! Oh, such a
day as this has been! To leave all that is dear to me. I have
been surrounded by my family, and my eyes have dwelt with a
foreboding tenderness, too painful, on the venerable face of
my dear father, that tells me I shall look on it no more. I
commit my children to your friendly protection, with a full and
perfect reliance on the goodness you have always manifested
towards me.
“Your ever faithful and affectionate
“S. SIDDONS.”
The mother’s heart could have hardly had a foreboding of the second
affliction about to fall on her then. A few weeks after she had taken her
departure from Marlborough Street, Sally describes to Patty Wilkinson,
who had accompanied Mrs. Siddons, picnics and parties she and her friend
Dorothy Place had attended, much to their amusement and delight. The girl
gives an account also of her brother Henry’s marriage with Miss Murray,
who, she says, “looked very beautiful in a white chip hat, with a lace
cap under it, her long dark pelisse tied together with purple bows ready
for travelling,” and mentions how she and Dorothy “laughed uproariously”
at a play they had “attended.” Yet death had already laid his hand on
this bright young life.
Mrs. Siddons proceeded on her melancholy journey, stopping to pay a
visit to Shakespeare’s house at Stratford, and thence to North Wales,
where, at Conway Castle and Penman Mawr, they did the tourist business
of gazing at sunsets through ruined windows, and listening to Welsh
harpers harping below. “In that romantic time and place,” Campbell tells
us in his ambiguous way, Mrs. Siddons “honoured the humblest poet of her
acquaintance by remembering him; and, let the reader blame or pardon my
egotism as he may think fit, I cannot help transcribing what the Diarist
adds: Mrs. Siddons said: ‘I wish that Campbell were here.’”
The bathos is complete when, the poet tells us, on Miss Wilkinson’s
authority, that while looking at a magnificent landscape of rocks and
water, a lady within hearing of them exclaimed in ecstasy: “This awful
scenery makes me feel as if I were only a worm, or a grain of dust, on
the face of the earth.” Mrs. Siddons turned round and said, “I feel very
differently!”
She spent two months acting successfully in Dublin; then she went to
Cork, and then to Belfast. On her return to Dublin she received the news
of the death of her father at the ripe age of eighty-two. Although not
unexpected, the severance of this life-long affection, coming, as it did,
at a time when other sorrows and anxieties weighed on her, was a trying
blow, and we find her writing to Dr. Whalley with a certain irritation
that betrays her state of mind, and also betrays her attitude towards her
husband at this time on money matters.
“I thank you for your kind condolence. My dear father died the death
of the righteous; may my last end be like his, without a groan. With
respect to my dear Mrs. Pennington, my heart is too much alive to her
unhappy situation, and my affection for her too lively, to have induced
the necessity of opening a wound which is of itself too apt to bleed.
Indeed, indeed, my dear Sir, there was no occasion to recall those sad
and tender scenes to soften my nature; but let it pass. You need not
be informed, I imagine, that such a sum as £80 is too considerable to
be immediately produced out of a woman’s quarterly allowance; but, as
I have not the least doubt of Mr. Siddons being ready and willing to
offer this testimony of regard and gratitude, I beg you will arrange the
business with him immediately. I will write to him this day, if I can
find a moment’s time. If you can devise any quicker mode of accomplishing
your amiable purpose, rely upon my paying the £80 within the next six
months. For God’s sake do not let it slip through. If I knew how to
send the money from here, I would do it this instant; but, considering
the delay of distance, and the caprice of wind and sea, it will be more
expeditiously done by Mr. Siddons. God bless and restore you to perfect
health and tranquillity.”
We can read between the lines of this letter, as we know that about
this time she received a pressing request from her husband for money to
fit out their son George for India, and to pay debts incurred on the
decoration of the house in Great Marlborough Street, suggesting that
in consequence she had better accept an engagement in Liverpool. She
preferred, however, though harassed by disagreements with Jones the
manager, to remain in Dublin. A report was circulated, as on the occasion
of her first visit to Ireland, that she had refused to play for the
benefit of the Lying-in Hospital, a charity much patronised by the Dublin
ladies. She indignantly refuted this accusation, ending with words that
show her state of mental suffering:—
“It is hard to bear at one and the same time the pressure of domestic
sorrow, the anxiety of business, and the necessity of healing a wounded
reputation; but such is the rude enforcement of the time, and I must
sustain it as I am enabled by that Power who tempers the wind to the
shorn lamb.”
Her son George came and spent a fortnight with her before his departure
for India, and the news from home concerning her daughter still seemed
good. Like a thunderbolt, therefore, from a summer sky, came a letter
from Mr. Siddons addressed to Miss Wilkinson, saying that Sally was very
ill, but begging her not to make Mrs. Siddons anxious by telling her.
Miss Wilkinson, however, felt it to be her duty to show the letter. The
mother’s heart divined all that was not said. She declared her intention
of starting for England without delay. A violent gale had blown for some
days, and no vessel would leave the harbour. Two days later a reassuring
letter came from Siddons addressed to his wife, telling her all was well
again, and advising her to go to Cork. She went, but her miserable state
of mind may be guessed from a letter addressed to Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
“Cork, March 21st, 1803.
“MY DEAR FRIEND,
“How shall I sufficiently thank you for all your kindness to
me? You know my heart, and I may spare my words, for, God
knows, my mind is in so distracted a state, that I can hardly
write or speak rationally. Oh! why did not Mr. Siddons tell
me when she was first taken so ill? I should then have got
clear of this engagement, and what a world of wretchedness and
anxiety would have been spared to me! And yet—good God! how
should I have crossed the sea? For a fortnight past it has
been so dangerous, that nothing but wherries have ventured to
the Holy Head; but yet I think I should have put myself into
one of them if I could have known that my poor dear girl was
so ill. Oh! tell me all about her. I am almost broken-hearted,
though the last accounts tell me that she has been mending for
several days. Has she wished for me? But I know—I feel that she
has. The dear creature used to think it weakness in me when
I told her of the possibility of what might be endured from
illness when that tremendous element divides one from one’s
family. Would to God I were at her bedside! It would be for me
then to suffer with resignation what I cannot now support with
any fortitude. If anything could relieve the misery I feel, it
would be that my dear and inestimable Sir Lucas Pepys had her
under his care. Pray tell him this, and ask him to write me a
word of comfort. Will you believe that I must play to-night,
and can you imagine any wretchedness like it in this terrible
state of mind? For a moment I comfort myself by reflecting on
the strength of the dear creature’s constitution, which has so
often rallied, to the astonishment of us all, under similar
serious attacks. Then, again, when I think of the frail tenure
of human existence, my heart fails and sinks into dejection.
God bless you! The suspense that distance keeps me in, you may
imagine, but it cannot be described.”
Meantime, no letters came. The winds raged without, and no vessel could
cross. At the end of the week the news that arrived was not satisfactory.
She made up her mind to throw up her engagement at any cost, and return.
She and Patty Wilkinson set out for Dublin; there they were again
detained, and received no news. Nearly beside herself with anxiety, she
again appealed to Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
“Dublin, April 2nd, 1803.
“I am perfectly astonished, my dear Friend, that I have not
heard from you after begging it so earnestly. Good God! what
can be the reason that intelligence must be extorted, as it
were, in circumstances like mine? One would think common
benevolence, setting affection quite aside, might have induced
some of you to alleviate as much as possible such distress as
you know I must feel. The last letter from Mr. Siddons stated
that she was better. Another letter from Mr. Montgomery, at
Oxford, says that George gave him the same account. Why—why am
I to hear this only from a person at that distance from her,
and so ill-informed as the writer must be of the state of her
health? Why should not you or Mr. Siddons have told me this?
I cannot account for your silence at all, for you know how to
feel. I hope to sail to-night, and to reach London the third
day. God knows when that will be. Oh God! what a home to return
to, after all I have been doing! and what a prospect to the end
of my days.”
At last she was able to cross to Holyhead. At Shrewsbury she received a
letter from Mr. Siddons confirming the worst accounts of Sally’s illness,
but begging her to “remember the preciousness of her own life, and not to
endanger it by over-rapid travelling.” As she read, Miss Wilkinson was
called from the room; a messenger had arrived with the news of the girl’s
death. Mrs. Siddons guessed what had happened by the expression of Miss
Wilkinson’s face when she returned, and, sinking back speechless, lay for
a day “cold and torpid as a stone, with scarcely a sign of life.”
Her own family came forward with consolation and help. Her brother John
wrote a letter, which she received at Oxford; her brother Charles came
to meet her, and conducted her on her first visit to her widowed mother.
Every other grief had sunk into insignificance by the side of the death
of her daughter. So worn out was she with misery and overwork, that the
doctors recommended the quiet and bracing air of Cheltenham. We get a
glimpse of her frame of mind in a letter addressed thence to her friend
Mrs. Fitzhugh in June 1803:—
“The serenity of the place, the sweet air and scenery of my cottage, and
the medicinal effect of the waters, have done some good to my shattered
constitution. I am unable at times to reconcile myself to my fate. The
darling being for whom I mourn is assuredly released from a life of
suffering, and numbered among the blessed spirits made perfect. But to be
separated for ever, in spite of reason, and in spite of religion, is at
times too much for me. Give my love to dear Charles Moore, if you chance
to see him. Have you read his beautiful account of my sweet Sally? It is
done with a truth and modesty which has given me the sincerest of all
pleasures that I am now allowed to feel, and assures me still more than
ever that he who could feel and taste such excellence was worthy of the
particular regard she had for him.”
The life out of doors at Birch Farm, reading “under the haystack in
the farm-yard,” rambling in the fields, and “musing in the orchard,”
gradually soothed the poignancy of her grief. “Rising at six and going
to bed at ten, has brought me to my comfortable sleep once more,” she
writes. “The bitterness and anguish of selfish grief begins to subside,
and the tender recollections of excellence and virtues gone to the
blessed place of their eternal reward, are now the sad though sweet
companions of my lonely walks.”
In spite of all her stoicism and resolve, however, the sense of her loss
would come back, carrying away all artificial barriers of restraint.
“If he thinks himself unfortunate,” she wrote of a friend, “let him
look on _me_ and be silent—‘the inscrutable ways of Providence.’ Two
lovely creatures gone, and another is just arrived from school with all
the dazzling frightful sort of beauty that irradiated the countenance
of Maria, and makes me shudder when I look at her. I feel myself like
poor Niobe grasping to her bosom the last and youngest of her children;
and, like her, look every moment for the vengeful arrow of destruction.
Alas! my dear Friend, can it be wondered at that I long for the land
where they are gone to prepare their mother’s place? What have I here?
Yet here, even here, I could be content to linger still in peace and
calmness—content is all I wish. But I must again enter into the bustle
of the world; for though fame and fortune have given me all I wish,
yet while my presence and my exertions here may be useful to others,
I do not think myself at liberty to give myself up to my own selfish
gratification. The second great commandment is ‘Love thy neighbour as
thyself,’ and in this way I shall most probably best make my way to
Heaven.”
How inscrutable, indeed, are the ways of Providence. Sally was her eldest
daughter and her dearest child. She had been born two months before that
terrible period of probation and failure at Drury Lane. Hers were the
baby fingers, hers the baby voice, that had coaxed the poor young mother
back to resignation and courage. She was twenty-seven when she was taken,
and had ever been the sunshine of the home. Yes, she was the dearest.
Strange that, deaf to our anguish and suffering, those are so often they
who are taken. If a heart in such a trial can still believe and trust
and love, then it is faith indeed—heaven-born, sublime. And such, we see,
was the broken-hearted mother’s.
During her stay at Birch Farm, John Kemble, Charles Moore, and Miss
Dorothy Place, her daughter Sally’s particular friend, came to stay
with her. In July they all of them made an excursion along the Wye,
after which she paid a visit to her friend Mr. Fitzhugh at Bannister’s,
and then returned to London, where she made an engagement to act the
following winter at Covent Garden.
Other trials awaited Mrs. Siddons, trials that, to a woman of her proud
and sensitive temper, must have been torture in the extreme. Whatever
her sufferings had been in the course of her professional career, from
scandal and misrepresentation, her character as a wife and mother had
been untouched. Now, when no longer young, and anxious to escape from the
harassing turmoil of the stage into the dignity and calm of a domestic
life, surrounded by her children and friends, a blow fell on her under
which, for the time, she almost sank. The circumstance is not alluded to
either by Campbell or Boaden, but is so interwoven with Mrs. Siddons’s
existence, and so colours her mode of thought at the time, that it can
hardly be passed over.
Mrs. Siddons met Katherine Galindo, author of the libel, at the
theatre in Dublin. She was a subordinate actress, and her husband a
fencing-master. It is difficult to understand how she can have become so
intimate, except that her own perfect sincerity and openness led her to
bestow confidence on a variety of persons, many of them not in any way
worthy of it. Her daughter, Cecilia, who later wrote _Recollections_ of
her mother, says that, instead of being hard and calculating, as the
outside public imagined, her mother was, on the contrary, too easy—too
much disposed to be ruled by people inferior in every way to herself,
credulous to an extraordinary extent, always trusting to appearances,
and never willing to suspect anyone. Perhaps, also, the great actress’s
weakness was a wish to “make use” of people, and a love of flattery—both
dangerous qualities for a woman in her position, laying her open, as
they did, to the machinations of adventurers. Be it as it may, we are
astounded at the girlish sentimentality of the letters she wrote to the
Galindos. Allowing even for the Laura Matilda style of expression of
the period, they show the substratum of romanticism that underlies her
character. The Galindos accompanied her to Cork, and then to Killarney.
Mrs. Siddons used all her influence to induce Harris, of Covent Garden,
to give Mrs. Galindo an engagement; but Kemble, when he arrived from
abroad, refused to ratify it. A letter from Mrs. Inchbald says:—
“When Kemble returned from Spain in 1803, he came to me like a madman,
said Mrs. Siddons had been imposed upon by persons whom it was a disgrace
to her to _know_, and he begged me to explain it so to her. He requested
Harris to withdraw his promise of his engaging Mrs. G. at Mrs. Siddons’s
request. Yet such was his tenderness to his sister’s sensibility, that
he would not undeceive her himself. Mr. Kemble blamed me, and I blamed
him for his reserve, and I have never been so cordial since. Nor,” ends
Mrs. Inchbald, with the prim self-sufficiency quite consistent with what
we know of the “dear Muse,” “have I ever admired Mrs. Siddons so much
since; for, though I can pity a dupe, I must also despise one. Even to be
familiar with such people was a lack of virtue, though not of chastity.”
We read later in Rogers’s _Table Talk_ that, not long before Mrs.
Inchbald’s death he met her walking near Charing Cross, and we are not
astonished to be told that she had been calling on several old friends,
but had seen none of them—some being really not at home, and others
denying themselves to her. “I called,” she said, “on Mrs. Siddons. I knew
_she_ was at home, yet I was not admitted.”
To return, however, to the Galindos. The wretched woman was stung to the
quick by the withdrawal of her engagement at Covent Garden, and although
Mrs. Siddons advanced a thousand pounds to the husband to buy a share
in a provincial theatre, and showed them much kindness, the jealous and
infuriated wife published in pamphlet form a wild and libellous attack on
the great actress, to which she added the letters that had passed between
them in their days of intimacy. By artfully turning and suppressing
sentences here and there, she succeeded in giving a significance never
intended in the originals. Although she said she had advanced nothing
but what she could substantiate by the most certain evidence, if called
upon to do so, she gave no proof whatever except of her own wild jealousy
and unreasoning disappointment at being refused an engagement at Covent
Garden.
It seems incredible that a woman of Mrs. Siddons’s social knowledge can
have been so imprudent as to enter into such an intimacy, and to write in
such a strain of deep affection to people she had known only so short a
time. The following is a specimen:—
“Holyhead, Sunday, 12 o’clock.
“For some hours we had scarce a breath of wind, and the vessel
seemed to leave your coast as unwillingly as your poor friend.
About six o’clock this morning the snowy tops of the mountains
appeared; they chilled my heart, for I felt that they were
emblematic of the cold and dreary prospect before me. Mr. ⸺ has
been very obliging; he has just left us, but it is probable
we shall meet again upon the road. I thought you would be
glad to know we were safely landed. I will hope, my beloved
friends, for a renewal of the days we have known, and in the
meantime endeavour to amuse and cheer my melancholy with the
recollection of _past joys_, though they be ‘sweet and mournful
to the soul.’
“God bless you all, and do not forget
“Your faithful, affectionate,
“S. SIDDONS.”
A little later she writes:—
“Pray ask Mr. G⸺ to send me those sweet lines ‘To Hope’—that
which he gave me is almost effaced by my tears—and let it be
written by the same hand. I could never describe what I have
lost in you, my beloved friends, and the sweet angel that is
gone for ever! Good God! what a deprivation in a few days.
Adieu! Adieu!”
Needless to say, this “screeching” friendship ended as one might expect.
As we have said, she failed to obtain an engagement for Mrs. Galindo
at Covent Garden, and lent Galindo a thousand pounds to help him to
take shares in a theatrical company at Manchester. He never repaid
the thousand pounds, and became abusive when she asked for it. She
accused him, in a letter addressed to Miss Wilkinson, of “hypocrisy and
ingratitude,” and the wife accused her of having nourished an affection
passing the bounds of propriety for her husband. All her real friends
mustered round her, but she suffered terribly.
She wrote to Dr. Whalley:—
“Among all the kind attentions I have received, none has comforted me
more, my dear friend, than your invaluable letter. I thank God all
my friends are exactly of your opinion with respect to the manner of
treating this diabolical business. To a delicate mind publicity is in
itself painful, and I trust that a life of tolerable rectitude will
justify my conduct to my friends. I have been dreadfully shaken, but I
trust that the natural disposition to be well will shortly restore me. My
dear Cecilia is, indeed, all a fond mother can wish.”