LIFE WITH THE PLAYERS.
The prospect was not alluring to Lady Bell. It sounded like a horrible
descent and social fall. She had not even heard of Mrs. Siddons, for
Mrs. Abingdon had been the first lady in the theatrical world when Lady
Bell had been in a box at the play.
But the girl was taken with the actress, as well as tempted to close
with the first offer of shelter and support, and there was a spice of
adventure in the offer dear to the girlish heart.
“If you will let me stay with you over your first halt,” Lady Bell
suggested a compromise, hesitatingly, “I shall indeed be glad of the
rest, and we could see how we—how I shall suit.”
“Exactly,” agreed the actress cordially; “and what am I to call my young
friend?”
“Arabella Barlowe,” replied Lady Bell, hastily supplying only her first
and middle names.
“Very well, Miss Barlowe, then will you be so obliging as to take little
Henry from me, till I stretch my arms.”
Lady Bell complied with the request, but, unaccustomed to the office she
had undertaken, she held the child in a constrained position, and he
immediately set up a cry.
Mr. Siddons shook his head meaningly, as if to signify his anticipation
of the failure of the scheme, and to add the reproachful reminder, “I
told you to have nothing to do with her, yet here you’ve gone and
engaged her as a companion, without a character from her former
mistress, on the shortest acquaintance, and that in very doubtful
circumstances where the girl is concerned. Was there ever such rashness,
or wrongheadedness heard of? What would become of you, with all your
talents, if I were not here to direct them and look after you? You know
how much the success of such an actress as you are, depends nowadays on
respectability, and now an undesirable connection may do us irreparable
injury. Yet here you go, and will take no telling. And the white-faced,
stuck-up thing is going to be useless into the bargain.”
But Mrs. Siddons showed no annoyance or regret while she resumed her
charge, turning aside Lady Bell’s discomfiture with a well-bred,
good-tempered observation, “When you have little ones of your own, Miss
Barlowe, you will know better how to guide them. I see that you have no
little brothers or sisters.”
“Neither big nor little,” admitted Lady Bell; “I was the only child in
the house of a grand-aunt.”
“Poor child! poor, old-fashioned, solitary little one,” lamented the
older woman, with sincere pity, thinking of her own homely, much
interested father and mother, and the many-childed sociality which had
belonged to the strolling players’ troop.
At the same time Mrs. Siddons was disposed to proceed to something more
profitable than the indulgence of sensibility. She started a question of
costume, and there she found Lady Bell capable and alert, Mrs. Siddons
did not doubt in practice as well as theory, for every well-brought-up
young lady was then fairly versed in the mysteries, not merely of
clothes, but of their making.
As Lady Bell conversed with animation and skill on the difficulties of
sack-backs, girdles, _negligées_, Mrs. Siddons took her little revenge,
and nodded triumphantly to her husband. Perhaps she had a sense of one
of her weak points as an actress, that she dressed often badly, though
in some degree artistically. She might have a consciousness that it
would be better for her if she could always command the correct
judgment, delicate taste, and clever fingers of “a real lady.”
The last stage in the journey of the little party brought them to the
town of Thorpe, where Mrs. Siddons was to attend a rehearsal and act the
same night, and where private lodgings, apart from the theatrical
properties—daggers, smeared with red paint, sheet-tin for thunder—were
secured, as the first lady’s engagement was to last for a week.
Miss Barlowe was not wanted at the rehearsal, nor, as Mrs. Siddons
decided, after a moment’s thought, to attend at the theatre at all.
But, as a resident in the actress’s family, the girl had a pass to see
the play, in her travelling-dress, from a private box. She accepted the
privilege reluctantly, out of compliment to her patroness (how
proprieties were reversed!), and under the somewhat pompous escort of
Mr. Siddons. The great object which Lady Bell proposed to herself was to
be as little seen as possible, in her shady nook of the dark little
theatre, and to get away from its crowd as quickly as she could. It was
not that she feared detection much, for she had never been within many
miles (stronger words in those days) of the town of Thorpe, and was not
acquainted with anybody in its neighbourhood; but she was ashamed of her
situation.
Lady Bell began by admiring Mrs. Siddons’s wonderful beauty, and by idly
following the story behind the footlights. Before long Lady Bell had
forgotten who she was and where she was. She had forgotten Mrs. Siddons
as the lady whom Lady Bell had first seen sitting in a duffle cloak,
breakfasting in an inn-kitchen, who was like, but even more beautiful,
than Mrs. Sundon, and whose likeness to Mrs. Sundon had something to do
with the readiness with which Lady Bell had agreed to serve for a time
as a waiting gentlewoman. She had forgotten her fellow-auditors, with
whom in the utmost community of feeling, she was straining her eyes,
clasping her hands, weeping her heart out.
The girl was transported by the magic of genius into a world of which
she had never heard or dreamt—a world which penetrated through, and
reached far beyond her world of high life—the only world she had known,
or cared to know.
Lady Bell left the theatre entranced, and fascinated. She was resigned,
content to be handmaid to a goddess, to spend her mornings helping to
pull up and down, re-fashion and re-arrange Mrs. Siddons’s trappings,
since in the evenings she was brought into thrilling, shuddering contact
with the love, rage, grief, and despair of Isabella, Zara, Mrs.
Beverley, Jane Shore, nay, caused to experience their struggles and
despair, and to make them her own. Such was the wonderful effect upon
Lady Bell of Mrs. Siddons’s seizure of every character—its rich, varied
utterance, its very looks, attitudes, and gestures, to which the
beautiful face, with its speaking eyes, the fine figure, with its
rounded, supple arms, alike lent themselves, willing slaves to the
soul’s catholicism.
The sight was an education worth a state of servitude to the young girl.
The very range of characters which Mrs. Siddons at that time played,
brought them within Lady Bell’s comprehension, whereas the higher range
of the Shakespearean characters could only have struck such a girl in
her sixteenth year, blind and dumb with amazement and awe.
There could not have been a broader contrast between the sad monotony
and brooding—almost inane hostility of Lady Bell’s life at St. Bevis’s
and Trevor Court, and this introduction to the lava flow of human
passion.
When Lady Bell recalled the former passages in her life, and put them
side by side with this, she felt tempted to hug herself on the change,
and to wonder with girlish levity and malice what Mrs. Kitty, Squire
Trevor, and Mrs. Walsh would say, if they saw her thus full of interest
and joy in existence.
From the theatre Lady Bell was wont to return home with Mrs. Siddons;
and, while Lady Bell was still in an ecstasy, to witness what was a
greater trial to the preservation of an illusion than any proximity to
spangles and lacquer could have proved.
The great actress refreshed herself after her exertions, by eating a
hearty supper of beefsteak-pie and porter, which she enlivened with some
rather heavy, if feminine enough humour; for the tragic muse had a
tendency to be ponderous—call it grandiose, even in her womanly fun.
Mr. Siddons criticized the performance, to which he could only hold the
candle, and cumbered with small directions for her next part, the wife
whose gifts he believed he could measure, in proportion as he could
reckon their commercial value.
It is saying something for young Lady Bell that she came triumphantly
through the ordeal. Youth is irreverent, and “quality” is supercilious,
yet Lady Bell was able to reverse the proverb of the hero and his valet.
She was so much of the heroine herself in playing the waiting-maid, that
she still saw a heroine in her mistress.
Lady Bell was selling her birthright, and considering it well sold in
return for beholding the creations of a woman of genius.
But the woman of genius, a compound of glorious imagination and shrewd
calculation, of truth of heart and some worldly-mindedness, was not so
sure of her share of the bargain.
Let it be remembered that these days were before Mrs. Siddons’s great
success, rather after her sore defeat, when she had been driven from the
London boards in artistic disgrace, and was drudging unremittingly to
retrieve her mistake and maintain her little family by playing at
provincial theatres and in country towns.
Mrs. Siddons found that any pursuit (having overleapt such towns as
Thorpe, to grope wildly for Lady Bell in London) which Miss Barlowe’s
flight might have occasioned, was not likely to reach the fugitive,
while the self-constituted guardian did not see, or seeing, could not
understand the guarded advertisements in the newspapers.
Mrs. Siddons began to think her young companion a serious source of
responsibility, for which there was not sufficient recompense in Lady
Bell’s conscious assistance in dress, and unconscious lessons in style.
And this in spite of what happened one day, when Lady Bell being present
as Mrs. Siddons was trying on a crown of pasteboard and goldbeater’s
leaf, to wear in the character of Roxalana, the girl startled the
actress by objecting inadvertently, “the Queen wore a coronet at her
birthday, not a high-peaked thing like that.”
It is true that as Mrs. Siddons, when she was not on the stage, held
herself aloof from her theatrical companions, and was the most domestic
of public women, she could keep “a genteel, modest young female” in her
household from many doubtful and dangerous associations. But, since this
young lady had no view of going on the stage, Mrs. Siddons judged
rightly that, in the interests of all parties, there was no reason why
Miss Barlowe should continue to undergo any exposure to the evils
attendant on a theatrical connection. The supervision necessary to ward
off such evils became irksome when prolonged, and the game was not worth
the candle.
The scruples were brought to a crisis by an accident. Lady Bell had
foolishly carried her note-book in her pocket, and got the pocket picked
when she was returning one night from the representation of _Venice
Preserved_, believing that she was walking and talking with Venetian and
princely conspirators in halls painted by Bellini and Titian, instead of
among the rabble of a little bill-stuck lane in an English country town.
Mrs. Siddons did not relish this proof of the power of her art; she
looked a little indignant and disgusted. It might be her note-book which
Miss Barlowe would lose next, only Mrs. Siddons always kept that safe in
her own pocket or her husband’s.
Mrs. Siddons’s gravity at the casualty outlasted Lady Bell’s mercurial
dismay, for the young lady soon proceeded to comfort herself more
frankly than cunningly, with the consideration, “It was but two
five-pound notes after all, and as I have lately provided myself with
two suits, and you pay my travelling expenses, I shan’t want it at
present.”
The next day Mrs. Siddons set about trying among the acquaintances who
gathered round her at every stoppage in her tour, whether she could not
procure another situation for Miss Barlowe. The agreeable and obliging
young lady was only Mrs. Siddons’s _compagne de voyage_, and would be no
longer wanted by the actress when she should settle down for the winter
in her home at Bath.
Mrs. Siddons was fortunate in hearing at once of something moderately
suitable, and directly communicated her doings and their success to Lady
Bell.
“My dear Miss Barlowe, you know I should like to have you with me
always,” she broke the matter, “but what can I do? I am a poor woman,
working hard for my family, and I must think of their interest before my
own inclinations, or even those of my friends.”
Lady Bell, in her brief season of security (for after the first few
days, she had confided absolutely in Mrs. Siddons), and of mental
enlargement and delight, had not looked farther than the day. She was so
astounded and heartstricken by the tidings of her dismissal, that her
pride was in abeyance for a moment. “Are you going to send me away from
you, madam?” she asked, her eyes widening, her pouting lips drooping
with distress and affright. “Oh! is not this too great a punishment for
letting my money be stole?”
“My dear Miss Barlowe,” repeated Mrs. Siddons, in remonstrance, “you
make a great mistake. I have no right to punish your carelessness in
letting your money go. I am planning for your good. Even if it were not
so,” she added immediately, with the candour which was always in excess
of her conciliatory qualities, “I have no room for you, or any call for
a companion at Bath. I own, with pleasure, that I have already got fond
of you, but you must see, unhappily, it is a fondness which I cannot
afford to indulge, when I have my children to think of, in the first
place,” and she turned and caressed her little Henry.
Mrs. Siddons urged the plea as if it admitted of no contradiction. She
urged the same plea many a time from youth to age, in trampling down
generosity, and even justice, till the very world that worshipped her
genius, was outraged by her family selfishness. In like manner, women
urge it still, without doubt or stay, as if family selfishness becomes a
divine right in the breasts of mothers.
By this time Lady Bell had recovered herself. “Very well, madam, it is a
question for you to decide,” she said, steadying her mobile face and
trembling voice, by a force put upon them, which obtained Mrs. Siddons’s
approbation. She could almost have wished that Miss Barlowe had gone on
the boards, but then, though she had emitted no other spark of
histrionic ability, she might have grown, what with her fresher, more
tender youth, the mystery of her concealed rank, and her unmistakable
air of distinction, a dangerous rival. The woman who knew her own genius
was too great to be morbidly vain and jealous, but she had extortionate
children.