SARAH SIDDONS.
On the 13th of June 1755,[50] when Garrick and Mrs. Cibber, Yates
and Mrs. Pritchard, Woodward and Mrs. Clive, were the leaders in the
Drury Lane Company,--while Barry and Mrs. Bellamy, Ryan and Mrs.
Woffington, were among the "chiefs" of Covent Garden, Sarah Kemble
was born, the first of twelve children, at a public-house, in Brecon,
in which town, exactly a score of years later, was born her youngest
brother, Charles.
By both parents she belonged to the stage. Her mother's maiden name
was Ward. This lady's father had been a respectable actor[51] under
Betterton, and was a strolling manager, when the hairdresser of the
company, a handsome fellow, poor, of course, and a Roman Catholic,
eloped with and married the manager's daughter. His name was Roger
Kemble. He was an actor too; love, at first, had helped to make him a
very bad one. Fanny Furnival, of the Canterbury company, drilled him
into the worst Captain Plume[52] that ever danced over the stage; but
Mrs. Roger Kemble, a woman who illustrated the truth that beauty is
of every age, used in her latter days to look at the grand old man,
and assert that he was the only gentleman-like Falstaff she had ever
seen.
Mr. and Mrs. Kemble were "itinerants" when the first child of their
marriage was born,--a child who made her _début_ on the London stage
long before her father;--the latter playing, and playing very well,
the Miller of Mansfield, at the Haymarket, in 1788, for the benefit
of the wife of his second son, Stephen. When Roger carried off Miss
Ward, her father with difficulty forgave her,--and only on the ground
that she had, at all events, obeyed his injunction,--not to marry an
actor. "He will never be that," said the old player of the Betterton
era. With which remark, his discontent was exhausted.
Her grandsire acted under Betterton and Booth; her parents had
played with Quin;--she herself fulfilling a professional career which
commenced with Garrick, and ended with her performing Lady Randolph
to Mr. Macready's Glenalvon;--when I add to this record that she
saw the brilliant but chequered course of Edmund Kean to nearly its
close, and witnessed the _début_ of Miss Fanny Kemble,--the whole
history of the stage since the Restoration seems resumed therein.
Roger Kemble's itinerant company, as his children were born,
received them as members. They played,--Sarah, John, Stephen,
Elizabeth,--almost as soon as they could speak. Sarah's first
audience compassionately hissed her, as too young to be listened
to; but she won their applause by reciting a fable. At thirteen,
she played in the great room of the King's Head, Worcester,--among
other parts, Ariel, in the "Tempest," her father, mother, sister
Elizabeth, and brother John acting in the same piece. For the next
four or five years, there was much of itinerant life, till we find
her at Wolverhampton, in 1773, acting in a wide range of characters,
from Lee's heroines to Rosetta, in "Love in a Village." In the latter
case, the young Meadows was a Mr. Siddons, who had acted Hippolito in
Dryden's "Tempest," when she played Ariel. In her father's company
she was always the first and greatest. She played all that the
accomplished daughter of a manager chose to play, among her father's
strollers,--and she attracted admirers both before and behind the
curtain. The Earl of Coventry[53] and sundry squires were among the
former. Among the latter was that poor player, an ex-apprentice from
Birmingham, named Siddons, between whom and Sarah Kemble there was
true love, for which, however, there was lacking parental sanction.
The country audiences sympathised with the young people, and
applauded the lover, who introduced his sad story into a comic song,
on his benefit night. As he left the stage, the stately manageress
received him at the wing, and there greeted him with a ringing box of
the ears.
This led to the secession of both actors from the company. Mr.
Siddons went,--the world before him where to choose; Sarah
Kemble,--to the family of Mr. Greatheed, of Guy's Cliff,
Warwickshire. "She hired herself," says the _Secret History of
the Green Room_, published in the very zenith of her fame,--"as
lady's maid to Mrs. Greatheed, at £10 per annum." "Her station,"
says Campbell, "was humble, but not servile, and her _principal_
employment was to read to the elder Mr. Greatheed." She probably
fulfilled the double duty,--no disparagement at a time when the maids
of ladies were often decayed ladies themselves.
[Illustration: (Mrs Siddons)]
Old Roger Kemble is said to have been very unwilling that any of
his children should follow that profession, in exercising which
he had wandered far, suffered much, and profited sparingly. The
unwillingness was natural, but he seems to have put it in practice
when too late;--after he had allowed his attractive young people
to enjoy some of the perilous delights of the stage. There are bills
extant which show that some of them, at least, were playing in his
company, when they were of tender years. When Sarah Kemble went to
Guy's Cliff, it was with no idea of permanently leaving the stage;
and if it be true, as alleged in the series of dramatic biographies,
published by Symonds at the beginning of the present century, that
Roger Kemble apprenticed his daughter Elizabeth to a mantua-maker
in Leominster, and Frances to a milliner in Worcester, he narrowly
missed marring their good fortunes. A similar vocation could not keep
Anne Oldfield from the stage, and though Elizabeth and Frances Kemble
were not actresses of extraordinary merit, they had not to regret
that they abandoned the vocations chosen for them by their parents,
for that which was followed by their parents themselves.
From Guy's Cliff, Sarah Kemble was ultimately taken by her
persevering wooer, to whom her father reluctantly gave her at Trinity
Church, Coventry, on the 6th of November 1773. The bride was in her
nineteenth year. The married couple continued but for a brief period
in the Kemble company. A month after the marriage, the name of "Mrs.
Siddons" was, for the first time, in the playbill, at Worcester,[54]
to Charlotte Rusport, in the "West Indian," and Leonora, in the
"Padlock." Shortly after, Roger Kemble saw Mr. and Mrs. Siddons
depart for Chamberlain and Crump's company, in Cheltenham. Here
Mrs. Siddons at once took her place. Her Belvidera excited universal
admiration. Lord Ailesbury, the cousin of the Pretender's wife, the
Countess of Albany, mentioned her to Garrick; and Lord Dungarvon's
daughter, Miss Boyle, directed her wardrobe, lent her many of her own
dresses, and helped to make others for her with her own hands.
The Cheltenham "properties" were of the poorest; but there were some
that even the Honourable Miss Boyle could not supply. Thus, for the
male disguise of the Widow Brady, Mrs. Siddons found, on the night
of performance, that no provision had been made; but we are told
that a gentleman in the boxes lent her his coat, while he stood at
the side-scenes, with a petticoat over his shoulders, and ready to
receive his property when done with!
Garrick, on Lord Ailesbury's report, sent King down to see this
actress of promise, and on King's warrant, engaged her for Drury
Lane, at £5 per week. Others say that it was on the warrant of Parson
Bate, of the _Morning Post_, who greatly praised her Rosalind.[55]
Her first appearance was on the 29th of December 1775, as Portia, "by
a young lady," to King's Shylock. On January 2d, 1776, she repeated
Portia, "by Mrs. Siddons." On the 18th,[56] she played Epicoene,
but the part was subsequently assigned to another. On the 2d of
February she acted Julia, in a new and poor farce, the "Blackamoor
washed White," and on the 15th, Emily, in Mrs. Cowley's new comedy,
the "Runaway," which part she had to surrender to Mrs. King. She was
not more fortunate in Maria, her third original character, in "Love's
Metamorphoses;" nor in a subsequent part, that of Mrs. Strictland
to Garrick's Ranger, did she excite any further remark save that it
was played in a pathetic manner. Her second appearance with Garrick
was as Lady Anne to his Richard, which she repeated twice, the last
time on June 5, in presence of the royal family. Five nights later,
Garrick took his farewell of the stage, and Mrs. Siddons's engagement
was at an end.
In Belvidera, for which she had been praised by King, she was not
permitted to appear. Bate had commended her Rosalind, but she had
to see it played by Miss Younge. Even Miss Hopkins, who became her
sister-in-law, had better parts than she; and there was Mrs. Yates
keeping Calista and Isabella, and Mrs. King playing Lady Macbeth, and
Mrs. Canning (mother of the future statesman) allowed on the benefit
of Reddish, whom she married, to play Monimia. Mrs. Siddons concluded
that the other actresses who plagued Garrick's life out, hated her,
because Garrick was polite and even kind to her. Sheridan alleged,
as a reason for not re-engaging her, that Garrick did not recognise
in her a first-rate actress (which she was far from being at that
time). Woodfall thought her sensible, but too weak for London. "You
are all fools!" said buxom Mrs. Abington.
The fragile, timid, faltering actress acquired strength in the
country. Henderson, himself rising to excellence, acted with, and
spoke well of, her. York pronounced her perfect, and Bath took
her with the warrant, and retained her, its most cherished tragic
actress, object of public applause and private esteem, till the year
1782. It was here, in truth, that the great actress was perfected,
and _that_ amid as many matronly as professional duties. On leaving
the Bath stage, she pointed to her children as so many reasons for
the step; and therewith went up, with no faint heart, this time to
the metropolis. "She is an actress," said Henderson, "who has never
had an equal, and will never have a superior." "My good reception in
London," writes Mrs. Siddons, "I cannot but partly attribute to the
enthusiastic accounts of me which the amiable Duchess of Devonshire
had brought thither, and spread before my arrival." Poor Henderson!
With broken voice, the old nervousness, and a world of fears, she
rehearsed Isabella, in Southerne's tragedy. When the night of
the 10th of October 1782 arrived, she dressed with a desperate
tranquillity, and many sighs, and then faced the public, her son
Henry, then eight years of age, holding her by the hand, and her
father, Roger, looking on with a dismay that was soon converted into
delight. Smith played Biron, and Palmer, Villeroy,--but Siddons
alone was heeded on that night, in which she gave herself up so
thoroughly to the requirements of the part, that her young son, who
had often rehearsed with her, was so overcome by the reality of the
dying scene, that he burst into tears.[57] "I never heard," she
writes, "such peals of applause in all my life. I thought they would
not have suffered Mr. Packer to end the play."
With the echoes of the shouting audience ringing in her ears,
she went home solemnly and silently. "My father, my husband,
and myself," she says, "sat down to a frugal, neat supper, in a
silence uninterrupted, except by exclamations of gladness from Mr.
Siddons." With succeeding nights, the triumph went on increasing. The
management gave her Garrick's dressing-room, and gentlemen learned in
the law presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas.
After the tender Isabella came the heroic loveliness of Euphrasia,
with Bensley for Evander, her success in which shook the laurels on
the brows of Mrs. Yates, and the widow of Spranger Barry. Having
given new life to Murphy's dull lines in a play which, nevertheless,
does not lack incident, she appeared as Jane Shore to Smith's
Hastings, and with such effect that not only were sobs and shrieks
heard from the ladies, but men wept like children, and "fainting
fits," says Campbell, "were long and frequent in the house."
To the Lothario of Palmer and Horatio of Bensley, Mrs. Siddons
next played Calista, in another of Rowe's tragedies, the "Fair
Penitent,"--that impersonation of pride, anguish, anger, shame,
and sorrow, and with undiminished success. But in Belvidera (to
the Jaffier of Brereton, and Pierre of Bensley) she seems to have
surpassed all she had hitherto accomplished over the minds and
feelings of the audience, whom she fairly electrified. Her Belvidera,
with its honest, passionate, overwhelming love and truth, was well
contrasted with her scorn and magnificence of demeanour in Zara. The
whole season was one of triumph,--the only dark spot in which was
the failure of Hull's "Fatal Interview," in which she played Mrs.
Montague, but with so little effect, where, indeed, no opportunity
was given her of creating any, as to injure for a moment a prestige
which grew all bright again by her performance of Calista.
It is singular that she liked her part in Hull's play--"a new
tragedy, in prose," she writes; "a most affecting play, in which I
have a part that I like very much;" but she adds, from her house, 149
Strand, "the 'Fatal Interview' has been played three times, and is
quite done with. It was the dullest of all representations."
Of Mrs. Crawford (Barry) the new actress entertained some small
fears, which are not too generously expressed in a letter to Dr.
Whalley. "I should suppose she has a very good fortune, and I should
be vastly obliged if she would go and live very comfortably upon it
... let her retire as soon as she pleases!" At this time, when her
second benefit brought her nearly £700, her ideas of supreme bliss
were limited to a cottage in the country, and a capital of £10,000.
Her success brought her many an enemy, the most virulent and unmanly
of whom was an anonymous paragraph-writer in the newspapers, who
slandered her daily, and for a brief moment excited against her the
ill will of the public. "He loaded her with opprobrium," says an
anonymous contemporary, "for not alleviating the distresses of her
(alleged) sister,"[58] Mrs. Curtis, a vicious woman, who, according
to the quaintly circumstantial writer, "would not conform to modesty,
though offered a genteel annuity on that condition." Mrs. Curtis read
lectures at Dr. Graham's Temple of Health, and the wayward woman
attempted to poison herself in Westminster Abbey. The enemies of
Mrs. Siddons somehow connected her with both circumstances, as they
subsequently did with that of old Roger Kemble applying, humbly, for
relief from some charitable fund, in the hands of a banker. Probably
the ex-hairdresser was proud, and may have preferred to apply for
aid to a fund which he had helped to sustain than to take it from
his children. The story is detailed by Genest, who seems inclined to
place some faith in it!
Ireland eagerly invited the new actress, and she crossed from
Holyhead to Dublin in a storm, which she looked on or endured with a
"pleasing terror." Landing in the middle of a wet night in June, no
tavern even would then receive a woman and a stranger, and it was
with difficulty that her companion Brereton, a promising Irish actor,
whom she had instructed in Jaffier, procured accommodation for her,
in the house where he himself lodged. She played with equal success
at Cork as at Dublin, particularly in Zara. From the former place
she writes to Dr. Whalley:--"I have sat to a young man in this place
who has made a small full length of me in Isabella, upon the first
entrance of Biron ... he has succeeded to admiration. I think it more
like me than any I have ever yet seen." Who was this unnamed artist?
Where is this young Isabella?
Mrs. Siddons returned to England, richer by £1000 by her Irish
summer excursion, and with an antipathy against the people, which
could only be momentary in the daughter of a lady born in Clonmel.
Her season of 1783-84 at Drury was doubly marked: she played two
Shakspearian characters--Isabella, in "Measure for Measure," to
Smith's Duke; and Constance, in "King John," to the King of her
own brother, John Kemble. The first was a greater success than the
second; but Constance became ultimately one of the most perfect of
her portraitures.
To see her Isabella, in the "Fatal Marriage," the whole royal family
went in quaint state. To her brother's Beverley, she played the wife,
in a way which affected the actors as much as it did the audience.
In the Countess of Salisbury, one of Mrs. Crawford's great parts,
and Sigismunda, she comparatively failed; but she achieved a double
triumph in Lady Randolph. It will be remembered how she had desired
the retreat of Mrs. Crawford. The old actress had been famous for her
performance of Lady Randolph, which she played on her reappearance
at Covent Garden in November 1783. Her oldest admirers (some critics
excepted) confessed that her powers were shaken. A month afterwards
Mrs. Siddons played the same character, for her benefit, to the
Young Norval of Brereton, when the old actress succumbed at once,
by comparison; but it is doubtful if Mrs. Siddons excelled her, if
the comparison be confined to the period when each actress was in
youth, strength, and beauty. "Mrs. Siddons," says Campbell, "omitted
Mrs. Crawford's scream, in the far-famed question, 'Was he alive?'"
In 1801, the year when Mrs. Crawford was laid by the side of her
husband, Barry, in Westminster Abbey, Mr. Simons, says Genest, "in a
small party at Bath, went through the scene between Old Norval and
Lady Randolph,--his imitation of Mrs. Crawford was most perfect,
particularly in 'Was he alive?' Mrs. Piozzi, who was present, said to
him,--'do not do that before Mrs. Siddons; she would not be pleased.'"
The King shed tears, however, at her acting; and the Queen, turning
her back to the stage, styled it in her broken English "too
_dis_agreeable;" but she appointed Mrs. Siddons preceptress in
English reading to the Princesses, without any emolument, and kept
her standing in stiff and stately dress, including a hoop, which
Mrs. Siddons especially detested, till she was ready to faint! The
King, too, praised her correct emphasis, mimicked the false ones of
other actors, and set her above Garrick on one point, that of repose,
whereas, he said, "Garrick could never stand still. He was a great
fidget."
The Countesses entrapped her into parties where crowds of well-bred
people stood on the chairs to stare at her. One invalid Scotch
lady, whose doctor had forbidden her going to the theatre, went
unintroduced to Mrs. Siddons's residence, then in Gower Street, and
calmly sat down, gazed at her for some minutes, and then walked
silently away. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his name on the _hem of
her garment_, in his portrait of her as the Tragic Muse, and Dr.
Johnson kissed her hand, and called her "My dear Madam," on his
own staircase. Statesmen were glad, when she played, to sit among
the fiddlers; and the fine gentlemen of the day, including him of
"Wales," visited her in her dressing-room, after the play, "to make
their bows." And then she rode home in "her own carriage!"
Edinburgh was impatient to see her, but slow in making up its mind
about her. One supreme effort alone, in Lady Randolph, elicited from
a generous critic in the pit, the comment, uttered aloud, "That's nae
bad;" after that sanction the house shook with applause. Glasgow, not
to be behindhand, gave her not only applause but a service of plate.
In Dublin, where, probably, her expressed dislike of the Irish people
had been reported, there was great opposition to her. Her engagements
stood in the way of charitable benefits, and no sacrifices she made
to further the latter, whether for societies or individuals, were
allowed to her credit. I think, too, that the Irish actors little
relished her stage arrangements made for proper effect, and Irish
managers were not delighted with her terms of half the receipts;
altogether Mrs. Siddons returned to London in saddened temper. In
Dublin she had raised a storm; in Edinburgh, where crowds of unwashed
people were crammed nightly to see her, in an unventilated theatre,
a fever, such as used to be in crowded gaols, broke out, and spread
over the city. As once in the case of Garrick, so now with the
great actress; it was called the _Siddons' fever_, as if she were
responsible for it!
The anecdote of "That's nae bad!" then, is not to be quoted to
the disadvantage of Scottish audiences.[59] The Edinburgh people,
moreover, had been told that Mrs. Siddons was unwilling to be
interrupted by applause, which, however, was not true; as she
herself alleged that the more applause the less fatigue, as she had
more breathing time. Indeed, the Edinburgh enthusiasm anent the
great actress surpassed all such manifestations elsewhere. Fancy
the General Assembly of the Kirk being obliged to arrange their
meetings with reference to Mrs. Siddons's acting, as the younger
members followed the artist, as Bossuet used to follow contemporary
actors, to study elocution. People, during her first engagement
of three weeks, assembled in crowds, hours before the doors were
opened, sometimes as early as noon. As soon as admission was given,
there ensued a fierce struggle which disregarded even the points of
bayonets, whose bearers were called in to quell disorder; and, as
soon as the play was over, and the doors were closed, porters and
servants took up a position, standing, lying, sleeping, but all ready
to secure places on the opening of the box-offices on the following
day. On one occasion there were applications for 2557 places, of
which the house numbered but 630; and when, at night, the struggle
was renewed for these, the loss of property, in costume and its
attendant luxuries of jewellery and the like, was enormous.
One night, as Mrs. Siddons was playing Isabella, and had uttered
the words by which she used to pierce all hearts, words uttered on
discovering her first husband, in whose absence she had remarried,
"Oh, my Biron! my Biron!" a young Aberdeenshire heiress, Miss Gordon
of Gight, sent forth a scream as wild as that of Isabella, and,
taking up the words in a hysterical frenzy, was carried out still
uttering them. Next year this impressible lady was wooed and won by
a Byron, the honourable John of that name, by whom she became the
mother of one more famous than the rest, Lord Byron, the "lord of
himself, that heritage of woe." Lady Gray, of Gask, told my friend,
Mr. Robert Chambers, that she "never could forget those ominous
sounds of, 'Oh, my Biron!'"
Notwithstanding all this success, I find contemporary critics
expressing an opinion that she played too frequently. "If she hopes,"
says one, "to have the gratification of being followed by crowds,
she should never perform more than once a week, or twelve times in
a season." The arithmetical computation seems defective; but it is
singular that Mrs. Delaney made a similar remark with respect to
Garrick.
Mrs. Siddons was, however, equal to more fatigue than some of her
admirers would have had her undergo. I find it recorded, with
admiration, in a paper three-quarters of a century old, that in four
days she had achieved the (then) incredible task of acting in three
theatres, so wide apart as London, Reading, and Bath!
Walpole thus speaks of her in Isabella, "I have seen Mrs. Siddons;
she pleased me beyond my expectation, but not up to the admiration
of the _ton_, two or three of whom were in the same box with me,
particularly Mr. Boothby, who, as if to disclaim the stoic apathy
of Mr. Meadows in "Cecilia," was all bravissimo. Mr. Crawfurd, too,
asked me if I did not think her the best actress I ever saw? I said,
'By no means; we old folks were apt to be prejudiced in favour of our
first impressions.' She is a good figure, handsome enough, though
neither nose nor chin according to the Greek standard, beyond which
both advance a good deal. Her hair is rather red, or she has no
objection to its being thought so, and had used red powder. Her voice
is clear and good; but I thought she did not vary its modulations
enough, nor ever approach enough to the familiar; but this may come
when more habituated to the awe of the audience of the capital.
Her action is proper, but with little variety; when without motion
her arms are not genteel. Thus you see, madam, all my objections
are very trifling; but what I really wanted, but did not find, was
originality, which announces genius, and without both which I am
never intrinsically pleased. All Mrs. Siddons did, good sense or good
instruction might give. I dare to say that, were I one-and-twenty,
I should have thought her marvellous; but, alas! I remember Mrs.
Porter and the Dumesnil; and remember every accent of the former in
the very same part." Subsequently, he says:--"I cannot think Mrs.
Siddons the greatest prodigy that ever appeared, nor go to see her
act the same part every week, and cry my eyes out every time; were I
five-and-twenty, I suppose I should weep myself blind, for she is a
fine actress, and fashion would make me think a brilliant what now
seems to me only a very good rose-diamond."
That Mrs. Siddons abandoned the reddish-brown powder then in fashion,
we shall see in the chapter on costume. Meanwhile, let us keep to
her career on the London stage. On her return thither from Ireland,
she found the town possessed by reports of her pride, arrogance, and
lack of kindness to her poorer colleagues. A cabal interrupted her
performance during several nights; but even when she triumphed over
it, by proving the injustice of her accusers, she did not entirely
recover her peace of mind. She felt that she had chosen a humiliating
vocation. There were, however, bright moments in it. In Franklin's
absurd tragedy, the "Earl of Warwick," her superb Margaret of Anjou
caused the playgoers who had applauded Mrs. Yates to acknowledge
that, great as the original representative was, a greater had arisen
in Mrs. Siddons. But when the latter played Zara, the supremacy of
Mrs. Cibber was only divided. In Cumberland's "Carmelite," in which
she played Matilda to the Montgomeri of Kemble, she produced little
effect.[60] The great actress had no such poets as the great Mrs.
Barry had, to fit her with parts; and, lacking such, fell back upon
the old. Her Camiola, in Massinger's "Maid of Honour," was, however,
only a passing success.
She made ample amends for all by her triumph in Lady Macbeth, in
1785. With this character her name and fame are always most closely
associated. Walpole himself could hardly have questioned the grand
originality of her conception of the part. Mrs. Siddons imagined the
heroine of this most tragic of tragedies to be a delicate blonde,
who ruled by her intellect, and subdued by her beauty, but with
whom no one feeling of common general nature was congenial; a woman
prompt for wickedness, but swiftly possessed by remorse; one who is
horror-stricken for herself and for the precious husband, who, more
robust and less sensitive, plunges deeper into crime, and is less
moved by any sense of compassion or sorrow.
From this night, Mrs. Pritchard, the Lady Macbeth of past days, was
unseated from her throne in the hearts of many old admirers. Mrs.
Siddons certainly never had a superior in this part, the night of her
first success in which formed an epoch in dramatic history. Sheridan,
the manager, had dreaded a fiasco, for no other reason than that in
the sleep-walking scene Mrs. Siddons would not carry the candlestick
about with her! Mrs. Pritchard had always done so, and any omission
in this respect--so he thought--would be treated by the audience as
a mark of disrespect to the memory and to the observances of the
older actress. The audience were too enthralled by the younger player
to think of such stage trifles. Mason, the poet, hated Mrs. Siddons
for surpassing his idol, Pritchard, and friends abstained from
pronouncing her name in his presence. She subdued him, of course,
and they played duets together at Lord Harcourt's; but she could
make nothing of the old poet's Elfrida, played to the Athelwold of
Smith--and Mrs. Pritchard was never displaced from the shrine she
occupied in his memory.
Lord Harcourt's judgment of Mrs. Siddons, in Lady Macbeth, is thus
expressed:--"To say that Mrs. Siddons, in one word, is superior to
Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, would be talking nonsense, because I
don't think that it is possible; but, on the other hand, I will not
say with those _impartial_ judges, Mr. Whitehead and Miss Farquhar,
that she does not play near as well. But there are others too, and
in the parts for Mrs. Siddons, that are of this opinion; that she
has much more expression of countenance, and can assume parts with a
spirit, cannot be denied; but that she wants the dignity, and above
all, the unequalled compass and melody of Mrs. Pritchard. I thought
her wonderful and very fine in the rest of that scene. She throws a
degree of proud and filial tenderness into this speech, 'Had he not
resembled,' &c., which is new and of great effect. Her 'Are you a
man!' in the banquet scene, I thought inferior to Mrs. Pritchard's;
and for the parts spoken at a great distance her voice wanted
power. Her countenance, aided by a studious and judicious choice of
head-dress, was a true picture of a mind diseased in the sleeping
scene, and made one shudder; and the effect, as a picture, was better
in that than it had ever been with the taper, because it allows of
variety in the actress of washing her hands; but the sigh was not so
horrid, nor was the voice so sleepy, nor yet quite so articulate as
Mrs. Pritchard's."
This is a less summary criticism than that of the Calais landlady,
on whom Mrs. Siddons had made an impression. "She looks like a
Frenchwoman; _but_ it will be a long time before she gets the grace
and dignity of a Frenchwoman!"
If Walpole may be trusted, Mrs. Siddons's ideas of Lady Macbeth had
not always been identical. I find this in a pretty picture painted
by Walpole, in 1783:[61]--"Mrs. Siddons continues to be the mode, and
to be modest and sensible. She declines great dinners, and says her
business and the cares of her family take her whole time. When Lord
Carlisle carried her the tribute money from Brooks's, he said she was
not _maniérée_ enough. 'I suppose she was grateful,' said my niece,
Lady Maria. Mrs. Siddons was desired to play Medea and Lady Macbeth.
'No,' she replied, 'she did not look on them as female characters.'"
At that time she had not made up her mind to attempt a part in which
Mrs. Pritchard had been unrivalled. As far as Medea was concerned,
Mrs. Siddons left the laurels of Mrs. Yates unshaken, and declined to
play that supremely tragic part. One of her chief desires was that
Walpole should see her in Portia, in which she had failed; Walpole
preferred witnessing her Athenais. In the passionate scenes of so
poor a play as "Percy," Walpole greatly admired her; but he found her
voice hollow and defective in cool declamation.
Of course, there were various individuals who were said to be--who
affected to be--or who really were in love with the great actress.
Among these was Brereton, son of the major of that name, and who was
a poor actor till rehearsing Jaffier to Mrs. Siddons's Belvidera
she inspired him, as Malibran did Templeton, into something like
excellence. Mrs. Siddons having thus effected for him what Garrick
had failed to do, Brereton was exceedingly grateful, and his
good-natured friends not only conduced to Mrs. Brereton's peace
of mind, by reporting that he was in love with the great actress,
but when "a malady not easily accounted for," as the theatrical
biographies call the insanity which impeded his performances with
Mrs. Siddons in Dublin, compelled him to leave the stage, the madness
was set down to over much regard for, and a little difference with "a
great tragic actress, of whom he is said to be very fond." To this
matter Mrs. Siddons doubtless alludes in a curious letter to Dr.
Whalley, dated March 13, 1785. "I have been very unhappy; now 'tis
over, I will venture to tell you so, that you may not lose the dues
of rejoicing. Envy, malice, detraction, all the fiends of hell have
compassed me round about to destroy me; 'but blessed be God who hath
given me the victory,' &c. I have been charged with almost everything
bad, except incontinence; and it is attributed to me as thinking a
woman may be guilty of every crime, provided she retain her chastity.
God help them, and forgive them; they know but little of me."
Poor Brereton died in confinement, in 1787; and if his wife had ever
been rendered unhappy by the report of his love for Mrs. Siddons,
his widow was rendered happy by the love of Mrs. Siddons's brother
for herself; and Mrs. Brereton, the lively Priscilla Hopkins of the
old days when her father was prompter, became Mrs. John Kemble.
Meanwhile, at other adorers of her own, Mrs. Siddons only laughed.
"If you should meet a Mr. Seton," she writes to Dr. Whalley, "who
lived in Leicester Square, you must not be surprised to hear him
boast of being very well with my sister and myself, for since I
have been here I have heard the old fright has been giving it out
in town. You will find him rather an unlikely person to be so great
a favourite with women." But her Desdemona certainly increased the
number of her lovers, old and young. The character is in such strong
contrast with that of Lady Macbeth, that the public were not prepared
for the new and more delicate fascination. "You have no idea," she
writes, "how the innocence and playful simplicity of my Desdemona
have laid hold on the hearts of the people. I am very much flattered
by this, as nobody has ever done anything with that character before."
Nevertheless, the sense of humiliation does not seem to have left
her. She announces the marriage of her sister Elizabeth with Mr.
Whitelock, a "worthy man," though an actor; but that of another
sister, Frances, has a more jubilant tone in the proclaiming: "Yes,
my sister is married, and I have lost one of the sweetest companions
in the world. She has married a most respectable man, though of small
fortune; and I _thank God, that she is off the stage_." This was Mrs.
Twiss. Of another sister, we only remember her as the old-fashioned
novelist, "Anne" (Hatton) "of Swansea."[62]
Of theatrical gossip, Mrs. Siddons's letters do not contain much,
but it is generally epigrammatic; "Miss Younge," she writes to Dr.
Whalley, "is married to Mr. Pope, a very boy, and the only one she
will have by her marriage." In 1786, she says, "We have a great
comic actress now, called Mrs. Jordan. She has a vast deal of merit,
but, in my mind, is not perfection." What Mrs. Siddons had acquired
already by the stage, we learn from her own words: "I have at last,
my friend, attained the ten thousand pounds which I set my heart
upon, and am now perfectly at ease with respect to fortune." From
lodgings, at 149 Strand, she had gone to a house of her own, in
Gower Street, Bedford Square, "the back of it is most effectually
in the country, and delightfully pleasant." There, in then suburban
Gower Street, was established a happy and flourishing household, the
master of which had friends who borrowed four hundred pounds at a
time, and the mistress others to whom she lent smaller sums, and who
thought her exceedingly ungrateful when she asked, as she did without
scruple, for her money.
Mrs. Jordan, "to my mind, is not perfection," wrote Mrs. Siddons,
but the former was more perfect than the latter in Rosalind, which
Mrs. Siddons played for her benefit in April 1785, to the Orlando
of Brereton; King played Touchstone; Palmer, Jacques. Mrs. Siddons
dressed the character ill, as the disguised Rosalind; her costume
was severely handled by the critics. As Miss Seward magniloquently
put it, "the scrupulous prudery of decency produced an ambiguous
vestment, that seemed neither male nor female." The character
was "totally without archness," said Young; "how _could_ such a
countenance be arch?" Campbell, like Walpole, says that in comedy
she gathered no laurels. Miss Farren and Mrs. Jordan excelled her
there; and her Mrs. Lovemore, in the "Way to Keep Him," must be
reckoned amongst her failures. That some of her heroines, in dull and
defunct tragedies, rank only next to failures, must be laid to the
account of the poets. Throughout the kingdom she was recognised as
Queen of Tragedy. In Scotland, a sensitive man in the Glasgow gallery
exclaimed, "She's a fallen angel!" and Edinburgh fishwives looked
with interest on the lady who had "gar'd them greet, yestreen!"
"I am going to undertake your adored Hermione this winter," writes
Mrs. Siddons to Dr. Whalley. "You know I was always afraid of her,
and I am not a bit more bold than I was." This timidity was not
justified; her Hermione, indeed, was not equal to that of a later
actress, Rachel, but it had grand points. The simple words, "Why,
_Pyrrhus_!" when Orestes (Smith) asked her whom she would have him
murder, thrilled the remotest auditor by their emphasis. But she
could thrill actors as well as auditors; playing Ophelia for her
second benefit, 1786, in the mad scene, she spoke some words in so
strange a manner, as she touched the arm of the Queen, that the
memory of so practised a player as Mrs. Hopkins was disturbed, and
she stood awed and silent.
[Illustration: (Mrs. Jordan)]
Though Ophelia was not a triumph, nor the Lady in "Comus," nor
Cleone, to which nobody went on the second night, for the strange
reason, that Mrs. Siddons was too affecting!--her position was
unassailably established. Mrs. Jordan she put out of all competition
with her in certain parts, by playing Imogen; for which she asked of
the artist Hamilton to sketch for her "a boy's dress to conceal the
person as much as possible."
Whether she desired to set aside Mrs. Jordan altogether as a rival
in comedy, is doubtful; but she certainly continued to try comic
parts, but the laugh excited was not hearty; her Lady Townly had no
airiness; her smiles are spoken of as glorious condescensions; when
Bannister was asked if her comic acting had ever pleased him, he
"shook his head, and remarked," says Campbell, "that the burthen of
her inspiration was too heavy for comedy," in which, according to
Colman, she was only "a frisking Gog." Miss Baillie, on the other
hand, insists that but for unfair discouragement she would have
been a great comic actress. In private life, she had great relish
for humour, and told laughable stories in her slow way, as well as
read scenes in comedy with great effect. And yet Katharine, with its
passionate expression, was as little thought of as Rosalind. One
would have thought this character would have fitted her; her own
judgment as to what suited her is not satisfactorily exhibited in her
preference of Tate's Cordelia and of Dryden's Cleopatra to those of
Shakspeare. But she distrusted her own judgment in some things. "Mr.
Siddons," she remarks to Dr. Whalley, "is a much better judge of the
conduct of a tragedy than myself."
This remark occurs in a letter written in September 1787 under
perplexing circumstances. Young Mr. Greatheed, of Guy's Cliff, was
the author of a tragedy, the "Regent," the heroine in which he
designed for her acting. She liked neither the play nor her own part
in it; but how could she disoblige the present head of a family where
she had found an asylum, when love had disturbed the tenor of her
life. Therefore, she wrote this letter to her friend Dr. Whalley,
who did _not_ burn it, as he ought to have done:--"September 1,
1787.--Mrs. Piozzi may be an excellent judge of a poem possibly,
but it is certain that she is not of a tragedy, if she has really
an opinion of this. It certainly has some beautiful poetry, but it
strikes me that the plot is very lame, and the characters very, very
ill-sustained in general, but more particularly the lady, for whom
the author had me in his eye. This woman is one of those monsters (I
think them) of perfection, who is an angel before her time, and is
so entirely resigned to the will of heaven, that (to a very mortal
like myself) she appears to be the most provoking piece of still life
one ever had the misfortune to meet. Her struggles and conflicts
are so weakly expressed, that we conclude they do not cost her much
pain, and she is so pious that we are satisfied she looks upon her
afflictions as so many convoys to heaven, and wish her there, or
anywhere else but in the tragedy.... Mr. G. says that it would give
him too great trouble to alter it, so that he seems determined to
endeavour to bring it on the stage, provided I will undertake this
milksop lady.... Mr. Siddons says it will not do at all for the stage
in its present state, for the poetry seems to be all its merit; and
if it is to be stripped of that--which it must be, for all the people
in it forget their feelings to talk metaphor instead of passion--what
is there to support it? I wish, for his own sake, poor young man,
that he would publish it as it is....
"Your truly affectionate S. SIDDONS."
The event justified her sentiments, and the "Regent" did not live.
She continued, however, to reap her harvest of laurels, gathering
them most profusely by her acting in that Queen Katharine, which had
been recommended to her by Dr. Johnson. We continue to associate her
name with this part, in which she was more queenly and dignified, I
suspect, than Katharine herself; certainly more imposing, if it be
true that by simply saying, "You were the Duke's Surveyor, and lost
your office on the complaint o' the tenants," she put the surveyor,
to whom the words were addressed, into such perspiring agony, that as
he came off, crushed by her earnestness, he declared he would not for
the world meet her black eyes on the stage again!
I doubt, however, if the poor fellow could afford to give up his
engagement; and I know that some of these "affectations" are assumed
by inferior actors. I have heard of a lady so audibly affected,
as she stood at the wing, by the acting of her manager, then on
the stage, that she was invited to his room to partake of cake and
wine. But Mrs. Siddons undoubtedly possessed power above all other
actresses of attracting and subduing. In the procession scene, in her
brother's barbarous mutilation of Shakspeare's Coriolanus, which he
played so inimitably, her dumb show, as Volumnia, triumphing in the
triumph of her son, attracted every eye, touched every heart, and
caused the pageant itself to be as nothing, except as she used it for
her purpose. It is strange that one so gifted should have ventured,
at four-and-thirty, to act Juliet, who
"Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night, shall be fourteen!"
and to Lammas-eve it wanted "a fortnight and odd days."
But authors, of course, make as many mistakes as actresses. When the
King, in Miss Burney's tragedy, "Edwy and Elgiva," cried, "Bring
in the Bishop," the audience, thinking of the pleasant mixture so
called, broke into laughter, which was only exceeded by that which
broke forth when Mrs. Siddons died, under a hedge and on a superb
couch! I do not believe, with Genest, that anybody ever laughed at
her dying Zara; but when, in "Edward and Eleanora," the two babes
were brought in, in imperial frocks and long coating, and were handed
into the bed of their dying mother, the audience did break forth
into loud hilarity. Indeed, babies in arms were stumbling-blocks to
Mrs. Siddon's dignity. At a later period than that above-mentioned,
when acting in Sotheby's "Julian and Agnes," she had to make her
exit, carrying an infant. The exit was made precipitately, and in the
doing of it she so violently struck the passive baby's head against
a door-post as to discover that the said head was made of wood. The
audience laughed again, and Agnes, Countess of Tortona, all taken
aback as she was, laughed heartily too. Once also, when Mrs. Siddons
was playing Agnes in Lillo's "Fatal Curiosity," and the flesh of the
audience crept at her suggestion of murdering the stranger, who is
her son,--as the scene proceeded towards the murder, one gentleman
in the pit laughed aloud; he would have been roughly treated by the
audience, but for the discovery that he was in hysterics at her
acting.
At other times, the actress was overcome by herself. In the pretended
fainting scene of Arpasia, in "Tamerlane," after the wild cry,
"Love! Death! Moneses!" Mrs. Siddons fell back violently, clutching
her drapery, and her dress all disordered,--a swoon in earnest,
which caused a rush, from the pit and boxes, of part of the excited
and sympathising audience. The agitation of the actress was almost
perilous to her life!
There were occasions, however, on which that audience refused to
be sympathetic. When she and her brother acted in Jephson's dull
"Conspiracy," we are told that they "acted to vacancy: the hollow
sound of their voices was the most dreary thing in the world." This
was among the least of her troubles; at the moment of her greatest
exertions, family cares and sorrows pressed on her. Mr. Siddons's
speculations alarmed her prudent mind. Mr. Sheridan's money, when he
held the purse at Drury Lane, flowed but slowly and intermittently
into her banker's coffers; and if this, or even illness, drove her
into temporary retirement, she had enemies who reported that her
brain was not as well as it might be.
At the beginning of the present century Mrs. Siddons more than once
expressed a desire "to be at rest." The labours of her life, and the
troubles of it, too, were equal in magnitude to her triumphs. Could
she but realise £300 a year above that she had already acquired for
her family by her sole and brilliant exertions, she would begin to
be "lazy, saucy, and happy." Nevertheless, when the period of 1812
arrived, and she had determined on retirement, she was less bold
in spirit. It was like taking the first step of the ladder, she
said, which led to the next world. Once she was in peril of taking
that first step less agreeably. While standing as the statue in the
"Winter's Tale," the flowing white drapery of her dress caught fire
from behind, but it was extinguished by the courage and prudence of a
poor scene-shifter, before she knew the whole of her danger. He saved
her life; and she not only rewarded him liberally, but saved his son,
a deserter from the army, from the horrible punishment which was then
inflicted on such offenders.
She upheld the dignity of her vocation, by refusing to act with the
"young Roscius," while to act inferior parts in the same piece with
her, actresses of reputation esteemed it an honour. Miss Pope, on
having the part of Lucy, in "George Barnwell," sent to her, returned
it with some anger; but when she was told that Mrs. Siddons was about
to play Milwood to Charles Kemble's Barnwell, Miss Pope resumed the
character with eagerness. On the stage, and even in the green-room,
she seldom departed from the humour of the part she sustained on
that particular evening; but she had no sooner concluded it than
she was herself again. Miss Seward records with particular delight,
after seeing the great actress in Beatrice, at Birmingham, that Mrs.
Siddons having made a curtesy generally to the house, made one in
particular, with an especial smile of benignity, to Miss Seward and
her friends in the stage-box.
She began and ended her London theatrical life with
Shakspeare,--commencing in 1775 with Portia, and terminating in June
1812 with Lady Macbeth. Some few subsequent appearances, indeed,
there were. When her son, Henry Siddons, was the somewhat unlucky
proprietor of the Edinburgh Theatre, he thought that if his mother
and uncle would but play for him in the same pieces, on the same
night, he should retrieve his fortunes. He wrote separately to both,
and received respective answers. That from Mrs. Siddons intimated
that she would act, for half the receipts and a free benefit. The
reply from John Kemble expressed his readiness to act,--for a free
benefit and half the receipts! Henry Siddons, much perplexed,
had to look elsewhere for less expensive aid. After his death,
and subsequent to his mother's farewell to the London stage, she
played several nights, in Edinburgh, _gratis_, for the benefit of
his family; and critics saw no other change in her, than that she
looked older. Her "last" appearance in public was in June 1819, when
she played Lady Randolph, for the benefit of Charles Kemble. The
Shakspearian characters for which she enjoyed the greatest fame, are
Lady Macbeth and Queen Katharine; and these were included in the
readings which she continued to give during a few years. These last
were especially relished by Queen Charlotte and her family;--the
guerdon for many of which, including Othello, read aloud at Windsor
one Sunday evening, was a gold chain with a cross of many-coloured
jewels.
Her beauty, personal and mental, she retained to the last,--the
former only slightly touched by time. _That_ was marked, in the
Gallery of the Louvre, even amid the finest examples of mortal and
godlike beauty from the hands of Greek sculptors. Her sense of the
beautiful was also fresh to the last. Standing rapt at the sublimity
of the scenery in the neighbourhood of Penmanmawr, she heard a lady
remark, "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 had the misery to outlive all her children, except her daughter
Cecilia, but in successive visitations she was so well-tempered as
to create the means of consolation, and in modelling statuary, often
found at least temporary relief from sorrow. Hannah More as heartily
applauded her in private life as the warmest of her admirers ever
did in public; and in truth her religion was cheerful, and her rule
of life honest. She was not only a great artist, but a thoroughly
English lady, a true, honest, exquisite woman; one of the bravest and
most willing of the noble army of workers. Proud, she may have been,
and justly so. Simple she was, and simple-minded, in many respects.
The _viola amoena_ was her favourite flower; and, from the purple
borders of her garden in spring time up at then secluded Westbourne,
her managing hand-maid acquired the name of Miss Heartsease.
Those who knew her best have recorded her beauty and her grace,
her noble carriage, divine elocution, and solemn earnestness; her
grandeur and her pathos, her correct judgment, her identification of
whatever she assumed, and her abnegation of self. Erskine studied
her cadences and intonations, and avowed that he owed his best
displays to the harmony of her periods and pronunciation. According
to Campbell, she increased the heart's capacity for tender, intense,
and lofty feelings, and seemed something above humanity, in presence
of which, humanity was moved, exalted, or depressed, according as she
willed. Her countenance was the interpreter of her mind, and that
mind was of the loftiest, never stooping to trickery, but depending
on nature to produce effect.
She may have borne her professional habits into private life and
"stabbed the potatoes," or awed a draper's assistant by asking, "Will
it wash?" but there was no affectation in this;--as she said, still
in her tragic way, "Witness truth, I did not wish to be tragical!"
I have alluded to the apparent lack of judgment in her assuming, at
thirty-four, the character of Juliet, a girl not yet fourteen. Miss
Weston, however, writes, "a finer performance was never seen. She
contrived to make her appearance light, youthful, and airy, beyond
imagination, and more beautiful than anything one ever saw. Her
figure, she tells me, was very well fitted by previous indisposition."
In carrying into private life her stately stage manner, Mrs. Siddons
undesignedly imitated Clairon, the "Queen of Carthage," as the French
called her, from her marvellous acting as Dido. "If," said Clairon,
"I am only a vulgar and ordinary woman during twenty hours of the
day, I shall continue to be a vulgar and ordinary woman, whatever
efforts I may make, in Agrippina or Semiramis, during the other four."
There remains but to be said that this "lofty-minded actress," as
Young called Mrs. Siddons, died on the 8th of June 1831--leaving
a name in theatrical history second to none, and deep regret that
the honoured owner of it had departed from among the living. Of the
latter was the elder brother, who owed much of his greatness to her,
and who is noticed in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] I can find no authority for this date. The birth of Mrs. Siddons
is always stated to have taken place on 5th July 1755.
[51] As a child.--_Doran MS._
[52] Sergeant Kite is the character which Lee Lewes, who tells the
story, says that Mrs. Furnival taught Roger to play. Both characters
are in the same play, the "Recruiting Officer."
[53] The Earl of Coventry was said to be an admirer of her mother.
[54] This seems to have been at Wolverhampton.
[55] Two interesting letters were published in the _Courier_ many
years ago, which proved that Sir Henry Bate Dudley (then Mr. Bate)
was Garrick's ambassador on this occasion. Garrick's letter contains
some remarks on Mrs. Siddons's condition which are more expressive
than elegant.
[56] Should be the 13th.
[57] This incident is said to have occurred at a rehearsal.
[58] I do not know why Dr. Doran says "alleged" sister.
[59] Campbell's account of this incident makes its meaning quite
clear. He says that when, after a supreme effort, the silence was
broken by the solitary "that's no' bad!" the audience was convulsed
at the "ludicrous parsimony of praise." But the laughter was followed
by such thunders of applause that it seemed as if the galleries would
come down.
[60] This is inaccurate. The play was a success, and Mrs. Siddons was
said to have been seldom more admired than in it.
[61] Walpole's letter is dated Christmas 1782.
[62] This was the notorious Mrs. Curtis, previously mentioned. Mr.
Percy Fitzgerald (_Kembles_, ii. 98) gives an admirable account of
her life.
[Illustration: JOHN P. KEMBLE.]