OLD AGE.
In 1817 Mrs. Siddons, anxious, for the sake of her daughter Cecilia, to
see more society, left her Country retreat, Westbourne Farm, where so
many hours of repose snatched from the turmoil of her professional life
had been passed, and took a house in Upper Baker Street. It is the last
house on the east side overlooking the Regent’s Park, and has a small
lawn and garden behind.
On the front, over the doorway, is a medallion stating that “Here
Mrs. Siddons, the actress, lived from 1817 to 1831.” When the houses
in Cornwall Terrace were about to be brought close to the gate of the
park, Mrs. Siddons appealed to the Prince Regent, who had ever remained
her firm and courteous friend. He immediately gave orders that her
view over the Park should not be shut off. The house, which is still
unchanged in its internal arrangements, is now used as the estate
office of the Portman property. The room she built out as a studio
for modelling is screened off into compartments with desks for the
transaction of business. That is really the only change that has been
made. It is an old-fashioned, comfortable house, panelled in dark oak.
The approach to the staircase has steps ascending and descending, and
the stairs themselves twist round corners, off which branch unexpected
passages, until they reach the first floor, where to the right opens the
dining-room, looking on the little garden, and beyond to the Park. There,
between the Grecian pillars with their honey-suckle pediment, once hung
the portrait of her brother John as Hotspur; now the space looks desolate
and bare.
Here she lived with her daughter Cecilia and Patty Wilkinson, her
attached friend and companion. Some among us are old enough to remember
having heard of her pleasant parties where all that was intellectual
and delightful in the London of her day was assembled. There she would
sometimes, to her intimate friends, give recitations of her favourite
parts, having by this time relinquished doing so in public. Miss
Edgeworth describes one of these readings:—
I heard Mrs. Siddons read at her town-house a portion of _Henry
VIII_. I was more struck and delighted than I ever was with any
reading in my life. This is feebly expressing what I felt. I
felt that I had never before fully understood, or sufficiently
admired, Shakespeare, or known the full powers of the human
voice and the English language. Queen Katherine was a character
peculiarly suited to her time of life and to reading. There
was nothing that required gesture or vehemence incompatible
with the sitting attitude. The composure and dignity, and
the sort of suppressed feeling, and touches, not bursts of
tenderness, of matronly, not youthful tenderness, were all
favourable to the general effect. I quite forgot to applaud—I
thought she was what she appeared. The illusion was perfect,
till it was interrupted by a hint from her daughter or niece, I
forget which, that Mrs. Siddons would be encouraged by having
some demonstration given of our feelings. I then expressed my
admiration, but the charm was broken.
Maria Edgeworth seems to have remained friends with Mrs. Siddons, but her
father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, hopelessly offended her the first time
he met her:—
“Madam,” he said, “I think I saw you perform Millamant five-and-thirty
years ago.”
“Pardon me, Sir.”
“Oh, then it was forty years ago. I recollect it.”
“You will excuse me, Sir, I never played Millamant.”
“Oh, but I recollect it.”’
“I think,” she said, stiffly turning to Rogers, “it is time for me to
change my place,” and rising with much haughtiness she moved away.
Many amusing stories were current of the dramatic manner which she
imported into daily life. Her question, in the tragic tones of Lady
Macbeth, to the over-awed draper as she bought a piece of coloured print,
“Will it wash?” The solemn reply to the Scotch provost, “Beef cannot be
too salt for me, my Lord”; and “I asked for water, Boy; you’ve brought
me beer.” Lord Beaconsfield told a story of his father, Isaac Disraeli,
returning home after a visit to London, and declaring that the event
that had made most impression on him was hearing Mrs. Siddons say,
“The Ripstone Pippin is the finest apple in the world.” Moore says he
remembered how proud he was of going to Lady Mount Edgcumbe’s suppers
after the opera. It was at one of these, sitting between Mrs. Siddons and
Lady Castlereagh, he heard for the first time the voice of the former
(never having met her before) transferred to the ordinary things of the
world, and the solemn words in her most tragic tone, “I do love ale
dearly.” Sidney Smith also describes her as “stabbing the potatoes”; and
it is said that on hearing of the sudden death of an acquaintance, who
had been “found dead in his bureau,” she understood the latter word to
mean a piece of furniture, and exclaimed, “Poor man! How gat he there?”
She was, as a rule, perfectly impervious to external influences, ignoring
them in her self-abstraction. She lived through the most marvellous
period of English and European history, yet no incident seems to have
made an impression on her mode of thought or life. She never entered
into political interests, though the friend of Fox, Burke, and Sheridan.
Her dramatic world of romance was all-sufficient for her. Hers was not a
ready intelligence; she required time for everything, time to comprehend,
time to speak; there was nothing superficial about her, no vivacity of
manner. To petty gossip she could not condescend, and evil-speaking
she abhorred. She cared not to shine in general conversation. Ask her
her opinion, she could not give it until she had studied every side of
the subject; then you might trust to it without appeal. This slowness
of mental action led to a regal, stately, and majestic bearing, that
gradually overlaid her genius to its detriment. As early as 1817, Fanny
Burney describes her as—
The heroine of a tragedy, sublime, elevated and solemn, in face
and person truly noble and commanding, in manners quiet and
stiff, in voice deep and dragging, and in conversation formal,
sententious, calm, and dry. I expected her to have been all
that is interesting; the delicacy and sweetness with which
she seizes every opportunity to strike and to captivate upon
the stage had persuaded me that her mind was formed with that
peculiar susceptibility which, in different modes, must give
equal powers to attract and delight in common life. But I was
very much mistaken. As a stranger I must have admired her noble
appearance and beautiful countenance, and have regretted that
nothing in her conversation kept pace with their promise.
We read in 1801 of Campbell meeting her walking on the banks of
Paddington Canal when she was living at Westbourne, and in a perfect
agony of fear “whipping on his great-coat,” and preparing himself for an
interview with the “great woman.”
Washington Irving gives a characteristic sketch of her:—
It was a rare gratification to see the Queen of Tragedy thus
out of her robes. Yet her manner, even at the social board,
still partakes of the state and gravity of tragedy. Not that
there is an unwillingness to unbend, but that there is a
difficulty in throwing aside the solemnity of long-acquired
habit. She reminded me of Walter Scott’s knights, “who carved
the meat with their gloves of steel, and drank the red wine
through their helmets barred.” There was, however, entirely
the disposition to be gracious, and to play her part like
herself in conversation. She, therefore, exchanged anecdote
and incident, in the course of which she detailed her feelings
and reflections while wandering among the sublime and romantic
scenery of North Wales, and on the summit of Penmaennmawr.
As she did this her eye kindled and her features beamed, and
in her countenance, which is indeed a volume where one may
read strange matters, you might trace the varying emotions of
her soul. I was surprised to find her face, even at the near
approach of sitting by her side, absolutely handsome, and
unmarked with any of those wrinkles which generally attend
advanced life. Her form is at present becoming unwieldy,
but not shapeless, and is full of dignity. Her gestures and
movements are eminently graceful. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell say
that I was quite fortunate, and might flatter myself on her
being so conversible, for that she is very apt to be on the
reserve towards strangers.
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell had every reason to say so, for only that very year
she proposed dining with them one day, requesting, as she always did,
that it was only to be a family party. About noon Washington Irving’s
brother and a friend, who had brought letters of introduction from
Sir Walter Scott, arrived. During their visit a servant unfortunately
came into the room and disclosed the fact that Mrs. Siddons was dining
there. Immediately the Americans made up their minds to stay and see
her. Campbell told them how annoyed Mrs. Siddons would be at meeting
strangers; they were not to be gainsaid:—
When the carriage approached the house, Campbell goes on, I
went out to conduct her over a short pathway on the common,
as well as to prepare her for a sight of the strangers. It
was the only time, during a friendly acquaintance of so many
years, that I ever saw a cloud upon her brow. She received
my apology very coldly, and walked into my house with tragic
dignity. At first she kept the gentlemen of the New World at a
transatlantic distance; and they made the matter worse, as I
thought, for a time, by the most extravagant flattery. But my
Columbian friends had more address than I supposed, and they
told her so many interesting anecdotes about their native stage
and the enthusiasm of their countrymen respecting herself that
she grew frank and agreeable, and shook hands with both of them
at parting.
Many were the honours heaped on her during these last years. She received
a formal invitation to visit the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Her daughter writes to Miss Wilkinson, expressing their delight with the
visit:—
I over and over wished for you, who would have enjoyed as much
as I did the attention and admiration shown to our Darling.
We had sights to see, colleges and libraries to examine, and
at every one of them there was a principal inhabitant, eager
to show and proud to entertain Mrs. Siddons. In the public
library, my mother received the honour of an address from
Professor Clarke, who presented her with a handsome Bible from
the Stereotype press. After which she read to almost all the
members of the University at present there the trial scene
in the _Merchant of Venice_, and more finely she never did
it in her life. Everyone was, or seemed to be, enchanted and
enthusiastic.
After her retirement from the stage, she gave public readings at
the Argyll Rooms in London. The arrangements were most simple. A
reading-desk with lights, on which lay her book, a quarto volume,
printed in large letters. When her memory failed her, she assisted her
sight by spectacles, which in the intervals she handled and used so
gracefully, that it was impossible to wish her without them. A large
red screen formed an harmonious background to her white dress, and
classically-shaped head, round which her dark hair was rolled in loose
coils. All her former dignity and grace seemed to return in these
readings. The effect she produced was marvellous, considering it was
without the aid of stage illusion or scenery.
The attention shown her by the Royal Family was a source of much
gratification. Her letters written, after a visit to Windsor, in January
1813, are almost girlish in their emphasis and expressions of delight.
She was in the middle of dressing to go and dine at Mrs. Damer’s, when an
especial messenger arrived in the dusk, from Lady Stewart, intimating the
Queen’s desires. Everything was rose colour. “The charming accomplished
Princesses, so _sweetly_ and _graciously_ acknowledge the amusement I
was so happy as to afford them. To have been able to amuse a little
a few of the heavy mournful hours, the weight of which those royal
amiable sufferers must so often feel, has been to me the _greatest_, the
_proudest gratification_.”
A magnificent gold chain, with a cross of many coloured jewels, was
presented to her by the Queen, and a “silken quilt for my bed, which she
sewed with her own hands.”
On the 9th of June 1819, when past sixty, Mrs. Siddons was induced to
appear for the benefit of her brother, Charles Kemble, at Covent Garden.
She had done so before, at the command of the Princess Charlotte, who
at the last moment had been unable to come. All the best critics were
of opinion it was a mistake. The part chosen, too, Lady Randolph, was
injudicious, with its lengthy speeches and continual movement. The
audience certainly gave three rounds of applause, in recognition of her
personal character, when Young Norval asked:
But did my sire surpass the rest of men
As thou excellest all of woman kind?
But this was a poor substitute for the breathless thrill, the agony of
emotion, with which she shook her audience in the old days.
Unfortunately for us and them, players are not immortal. Health,
strength, beauty, voice, fail them, and without these adventitious aids
genius is of no avail on the stage. Any loss of reputation to an actress
like Mrs. Siddons was a loss to the world; these reappearances, when age
and infirmity had weakened her powers, were much to be deplored. Let us,
however, turn from this subject to more pleasant ones; and there were so
many pleasant incidents and so few mistakes in Mrs. Siddons’s dignified
and decorous life, that we can afford to be lenient.
In Fanny Kemble’s _Record of a Girlhood_, we get glimpses of Aunt
Siddons, stately and gentle, surrounded by children and grandchildren.
You know we were to spend Christmas Eve at my Aunt Siddons’s;
we had a delightful evening, and I was very happy. My aunt came
down from the drawing-room (for we danced in the dining-room
on the ground-floor) and sat among us, and you cannot think
how nice and pretty it was to see her surrounded by her clan,
more than three dozen strong; some of them so handsome, and
many with a striking likeness to herself, either in feature or
expression. Mrs. Harry and Cecy danced with us, and we enjoyed
ourselves very much.
The younger sons of her son George Siddons (who had obtained a Government
post at Calcutta), were being educated with their sisters in England, and
always spent their holidays with their grandmother, Mrs. Siddons. The
youngest of these three school-boys was the father of the beautiful Mrs.
Scott Siddons of the present day.
Mrs. Siddons was very fond of children. Campbell tells a story of his
once leaving his little boy, aged six, with her, when she was stopping in
Paris. When he returned, he found them both in animated conversation. She
had been amusing him with all sorts of stories, which she told admirably.
The evening before she had been to a fashionable party and offended
everyone by the austerity of her manners.
Her letters about her grandchildren are full of simple grandmotherly
love, naturally expressed. She wrote from Broadstairs in 1806:—
“My dear Harry, I have very great pleasure in telling you that your dear
little ones are quite well. The bathing agrees with them perfectly. They
are exceedingly improved in looks and appetite, though their stomachs
turn a little, poor dears, at the sight of the machines; but, indeed,
upon the whole, the dipping is pretty well got over, and they look so
beautiful after it, it would do your heart good to see them. I assure you
they are the belles of Broadstairs. Their nurse is very good-humoured to
them. She is certainly not a beauty, but they like her as well as if she
were a Venus. Never were little souls so easily managed, or so little
troublesome.”
The great actress would boast with more pride of the effect she produced
on a little girl during the performance of _Jane Shore_, than of her
greatest triumphs. In the last scenes of the play, when the unfortunate
heroine, destitute and starving, exclaims in an agony of suffering, “I
have not tasted bread for three days,” a little voice was heard, broken
by sobs, exclaiming, “Madam, madam! do take my orange, if you please,”
and the audience and the actress beheld, in one of the stage boxes, a
little girl holding her out an orange.
A lady, now alive, recalls to mind, when she was very young, being taken
to pay a visit to “the great Mrs. Siddons.” She long after remembered
those wonderful eyes, and particularly the long silky eye-lashes, which
she noticed were of extraordinary length, and curled upwards in a
beautiful curve. On being told that the child was obliged to go away to
the country, and would have no opportunity of hearing her on the stage,
she kindly said she would recite for her, and did so there and then.
One of her grandchildren has described the interest of her visits
to her. Frequently her grandmother would read to them, giving them
the choice of the play. One evening in particular she recalled the
reading of _Othello_. “It was a stormy night, and the thunder was heard
occasionally, and she so grand and impressive; her look! her voice, her
magnificent eyes, still clear and brilliant. It was real reading, not
declamation, and yet the effect,” she says, “was beyond anything I could
conceive of the finest acting.” This was only the winter before her death.
We find her now suffering all the fluctuations in spirits old age is
subject to, sometimes complaining of feebleness and suffering, at others
returning to all the girlish playfulness of her younger days. On July
12th, 1819, she writes to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
“Well, my dear friend, though I am not of rank and condition to be myself
at the Prince’s ball, my fine clothes, at any rate, will have that
honour. Lady B⸺ has borrowed my Lady Macbeth’s finest banquet dress,
and I wish her ladyship joy in wearing it, for I found the weight of it
almost too much for endurance for half an hour. How will she be able to
carry it for such a length of time? But young and old are expected to
appear, upon that ‘high solemnity’ in splendid and fanciful apparel, and
many of these beauties will appear in my stage finery. Lady C⸺ at first
intended to present herself (as she said very drolly) as a vestal virgin,
but has now decided upon the dress of a fair Circassian. I should like
to see this gorgeous assembly, and I have some thoughts of walking in in
the last dress of Lady Macbeth, and swear I came there in my sleep. But
enough of this nonsense.”
Her brother John, sharer of most of her trials and triumphs, settled at
Lausanne towards the end of his life. The loss of his society was a sad
deprivation, and in 1821 she paid him a visit. Her daughter Cecilia, in
a letter home, described the delights of the villa the Kembles lived in,
and the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
Mrs. Siddons meditated an expedition to Chamounix but for some reason it
was given up, and they went to Berne; the weather was wet, however, and
they were obliged to return sooner than they expected. They ate chamois,
crossed a lake, mounted a glacier with two men, cutting steps in the ice
with a hatchet, and did all that was required of them as travellers. “My
mother bore all the fatigues much more wonderfully than any of us,” the
letter ends.
In spite of her wonderful energy, old age was creeping on her apace.
Erysipelas, which was ultimately fatal, frequently attacked her with
a burning soreness in her mouth, or with headaches that were equally
painful. She had to submit to that worst penalty of advancing years, the
death of friends; those of Mrs. Damer and of Mrs. Piozzi were a great
loss. In February 1823, John Kemble died at Lausanne. On the 9th he dined
out, and it was remarked that he was in very good spirits; the next
evening a few friends dropped in for a rubber of whist. The following
Sunday he was out in his garden; but while he was sitting reading the
paper, it fell from his hands. His wife rushed to him; he only faltered
a few words, begging her not to be alarmed. The doctor was sent for, but
one stroke after another seized him, and he died on the 20th. This was a
sad blow to Mrs. Siddons.
In her seventy-third year she wrote to Mrs. Fitzhugh from Cobham Hall,
the seat of Lord Darnley:—
“I have brought myself to see whether change of scene, and the
cordial kindness of my noble host and hostess, will not at
least do something to divert my torment. But real evils will
not give way to such applications, gratifying though they may
be. I have had the honour, however, of conversing with Prince
Leopold; he is a very agreeable and sensible converser, and Her
Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent seems to justify all the
opinions of her amiability. I have begun to recover the loss of
my dear little girls, George’s daughters. How I long to hear
they are safe in the arms of their anxious parents. In this
magnificent place, I assure you, my seventy-second birthday was
celebrated with the most gratifying and flattering cordiality.
We had music and Shakespeare, which Lord Darnley has at his
finger’s ends. I should have enjoyed the party more if it had
not been so large; but twenty-three people at dinner is rather
too much of a good thing.... Talking of the arts, I cannot help
thinking with sorrow of the statue of my poor brother. It is
an absolute libel on his noble person and air. I should like to
pound it into dust, and scatter it to the winds.
“Yours,
“S. S.”
A statue of the great actress, by Chantry, was put up later, by Macready,
beside her brother’s in Westminster Abbey.
In April 1831 she was attacked with the illness that was to prove fatal.
The appearance of the erysipelas in one of her ancles alarmed the
doctor, but she got better, and before the end of the month felt so far
recovered, that she laughingly told him that he need not come to see her
any more, for “she had health to sell.”
Unfortunately, she ventured out driving soon afterwards, the day was
cold, and a chill seemed to have developed the erysipelas internally. On
the 31st May she was seized with sickness and ague, and in the course of
the evening both her legs were attacked with erysipelas inflammation.
This increased during the night, and was accompanied by much fever. In
the course of the following day there was a consultation of doctors. They
pronounced the case hopeless, mortification supervened, and about nine on
the morning of the 8th June she expired, after a week of acute suffering.
On the 15th June she was buried in the New Ground of Paddington Church,
followed to the grave by her brother Charles Kemble, two sons of Henry
Siddons, and many others. Alas! of her own immediate family few were
left, and her eldest son was in India. In the procession were eleven
mourning coaches, with the performers of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane
and Covent Garden. When the burial service had been read, a young woman,
Campbell tells us, knelt down beside the coffin with demonstrations of
the wildest grief. She came veiled, and her name was never discovered.
Why go into the items of the will Mrs. Siddons left, and the articles
she assigned to her heirs? To us she has bequeathed the memory of one of
the greatest dramatic artists that ever graced our stage, and of one of
the noblest of the long list of noble women enrolled in the annals of
our country. Time goes on whirling away all memories in its relentless
rush. A new generation is ever ready to depreciate the enthusiasms of
their grandfathers, and ours is incredulous when told of the powers of a
Garrick or a Siddons.
It was with a feeling of pain that, while standing the other day by the
great actress’s grave where it lies lonely and untended in Paddington
churchyard, we heard that our cousins across the Atlantic set more
store on the memory of Sarah Siddons than we do. Miss Mary Anderson,
the custodian told us, whenever she is in London, comes up on Sunday
afternoons, with parties of her countrymen, to lay fresh flowers on the
grave, and has undertaken, at her own expense, to execute all necessary
repairs to the railings and tombstone. Let us, before it is too late,
anticipate this high-minded and generous offer.
FOOTNOTES
[1] It was the same Lady Lucan who was said once to have asked the
actress: “Pray, Madam, when you are to prepare yourself in a character,
what is your _primary object_ of attention, the _superstructure_, as it
may be called, or the ‘foundation’ of the part?”
[2] Mrs. Piozzi, who, after Mr. Thrale’s death, had married again, much
to the disgust of the Johnsonian band.
[3] On the first night of the O. P. riots, we are told the actress wore
a costume fashioned after the bridal suit of the unfortunate Queen of
Scots, and was a perfect blaze with the jewels in the stomacher of the
dress, as well as upon her hair and around her neck.
London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13 Waterloo Place. S.W.