Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)

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 disagreeable;" 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!"