MRS. SIDDONS.

The light esteem in which the theatrical profession has commonly been held renders it probable that the introduction of an actress among the few female names included in our Gallery may seem to some persons uncalled for and injudicious. That there are few players entitled to such admission we allow: but for one who studied acting as a branch of art, discarding every unworthy species of stage trickery; and who, by profound study, and a rare union of mental and bodily excellence, has inseparably connected her name and memory with the masterpieces of the British drama, we do claim a place (to which her eminent brother is almost equally entitled) among the master-minds of the fine arts.

Sarah Kemble came of a theatrical stock. Her father was manager of a provincial company of actors; her mother was the daughter of a provincial manager. Both parents maintained a high character for moral rectitude; and the latter is said to have been distinguished by a strength of mind, and stateliness of demeanour, which may have had some influence upon the character and manners of her celebrated children. Sarah, their eldest daughter, was born at Brecon, July 5, 1755. From an early period of childhood she was trained to the stage. She was scarcely more than seventeen when her affections were engaged by an actor of her father’s company, named Siddons, to whom, after some opposition on the part of her parents, she was married, November 26, 1773. Her early married life was beset with difficulties. Mr. Siddons possessed little merit as an actor; and during nine years, which elapsed before Mrs. Siddons established a metropolitan reputation, she had to endure hard work and low pay. The first encouragement which she received in her career was from the notice of the Hon. Miss Boyle, afterwards Lady O’Neil, a lady possessed of high mental qualities, as well as birth and beauty, who was so much struck

Engraved by W. Holl.MRS. SIDDONS.After the Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds.Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

by the young actress’s performance of Belvidera at Cheltenham in 1774, that she sought her out in her obscurity, and there commenced a warm and lasting friendship. Through this connection Mrs. Siddons seems to have been introduced to Garrick, by whom she was engaged at Drury Lane theatre. Her first appearance was in the character of Portia, December 29, 1775. She was received with indifference; and during the remainder of the season she did not establish herself in the favour of the London audiences, nor did she appear in any first-rate part. Garrick professed high admiration for her, and on quitting the stage, which he did towards the close of that season, promised to procure for her an advantageous engagement with his successors in the management. In this promise he failed, for during the summer of 1776 she received an abrupt dismissal from Drury Lane. Her failure to produce a sensation in the first instance does not seem to have weighed much on her mind. She knew her powers, but was conscious that they were immature; and she was deeply sensible through life how necessary, even to the greatest powers, are cultivation and study. But this dismissal affected her in a very different manner. In her own words, quoted from the autograph ‘Recollections’ intrusted to her friend and biographer, Mr. Campbell, “it was a stunning and cruel blow, overwhelming all my ambitious hopes, and involving peril, even to the very subsistence of my helpless babes.”

Her fears were soothed, and her mortification relieved by her success at several of the provincial theatres. She received her dismissal from Drury Lane while at Birmingham, where she was engaged during the summer to perform the highest characters; and where she laid the foundation of her fame, by acquiring the good opinion of the actor Henderson, who pronounced, within a year of her expulsion from Drury Lane, that she was an actress who never had an equal, nor would ever have a superior. Through his recommendation, in the following year she obtained a permanent engagement at Bath, where she was received with distinguished favour, and where she remained until her increasing reputation procured for her an invitation to return to Drury Lane. She chose the part of Isabella, in the ‘Fatal Marriage,’ for her debut, October 10, 1782. The anxiety with which she approached this second trial is described in an interesting manner in her own memoranda. On this occasion her hopes were fully gratified. She played Isabella eight times between October 10, and October 30, when she appeared in her second character, Euphrasia, in the ‘Grecian Daughter.’ Her other parts, during this first season, were Jane Shore, Calista, Belvidera, and Zara in the ‘Mourning Bride.’

We propose in this sketch of Mrs. Siddons’s theatrical life to notice only the most remarkable of her characters, reserving to the end a complete list of them, together with a few remarks on her style of acting. In November, 1783, she played Isabella in ‘Measure for Measure,’ with entire success; and thus solved the real or pretended doubts of a few persons, who questioned her courage or capacity to represent the masterpieces of Shakspeare to a London audience. No one could do more justice to the pure, uncompromising, clear-sighted virtue of Isabella, so consonant to her own honest and high-souled simplicity: nor was she at fault in attempting, during the same season, Constance, in ‘King John,’ a character of more varied emotion, and far greater demand on the resources of the player. Of this part she says, in an elaborate criticism, worthy of being read with attention by all persons, and especially by actors, “I cannot conceive in the whole range of dramatic character a greater difficulty than that of representing this grand creature.” Those who remember her performance of it in the meridian of her powers, bear testimony, with Mr. Campbell, to the depth of her maternal affection, her queen-like majesty, and her tremendous power of invective and sarcasm: when first revived for her the play seems to have been coldly received.

The celebrated portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse was painted by Reynolds in 1783. The character was suggested by the painter: the attitude is that in which the sitter first placed herself, by which Reynolds was so struck that he at once adopted it.

An interesting anecdote relative to Mrs. Siddons’s first country performance of Lady Macbeth, is told in the Memoranda from which we have already quoted. “It was my custom to study my characters at night, when the domestic cares and business of the day were over. On the night preceding that in which I was to appear for the first time, I shut myself up, as usual, when all the family were retired, and commenced my study ofLady Macbeth. As the character is very short, I thought I should soon accomplish it. Being then only twenty years of age, I believed, as many do believe, that little more was necessary than to get the words into my head; for the necessity of discrimination, and the development of character, at that time of my life, had scarcely entered into my imagination. But, to proceed, I went on with tolerable composure in the silence of the night, (a night I can never forget,) till I came to the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose to a degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I snatched up my candle, and hurried out of the room, in a paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling of it,as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-struck fancy like the movement of a spectre pursuing me. At last I reached my chamber, where I found my husband fast asleep. I clapt my candlestick down upon the table, without the power of putting the candle out; and I threw myself on my bed, without daring to stay even to take off my clothes. At peep of day I rose to resume my task; but so little did I know of my part when I appeared in it at night, that my shame and confusion cured me of procrastinating my business for the remainder of my life.”

“About six years afterwards I was called upon to act the same character in London. By this time I had perceived the difficulty of assuming a personage with whom no one feeling of common general nature was congenial or assistant. One’s own heart could prompt one to express with some degree of truth the sentiments of a mother, a daughter, a wife, a lover, a sister, &c.; but to adopt this character must be an effort of the judgment alone.”

In accordance with this, Mrs. Siddons has been known to say, that Lady Macbeth gave her more trouble than any other of her characters, both in settling her conception of the poet’s meaning, and determining the means of giving effect to it. Her success however in the eyes of the public was complete: in Mr. Campbell’s words, “the moment she seized the part she identified her image with it in the minds of the living generation.” She appeared in it for the first time in London, February 2, 1785. Smith played Macbeth. As in the case of Constance, Mrs. Siddons has left, in an elaborate essay on the character of Lady Macbeth, interesting evidence of the deep study which she bestowed on her profession; a point in which, as well as in general mental cultivation, the Kemble family have been advantageously distinguished from others even of our first-rate actors. It is scarcely possible to conceive ‘Macbeth’ so well performed as when the principal characters were filled by Mrs. Siddons and Kemble: the actors might have been thought born for the parts. The same may be said of ‘Coriolanus,’ in which they appeared together for the first time in February, 1789. But the season of 1785 is also memorable for Mrs. Siddons’s first appearance in Desdemona, a character as widely different from the Scottish Queen as can well be imagined. Yet it is recorded to have been one of the actress’s most exquisite performances; and this is one of the strongest proofs of her extraordinary talent. Unsuitable as her person, voice, and general demeanour may seem to those who knew her only in her later days, we have the undeniable testimony of competent judges to the grace, loveliness, and sweetnesswith which she personated the gentle Venetian. Her very stature, Mr. Boaden says, seemed to be lowered. Ophelia she performed once, and once only, for her benefit, May 15, 1786, to her brother’s Hamlet; and, though a poor singer, she rendered the part deeply affecting. Juliet she also performed, we believe once only, for her benefit in 1789. Cordelia and Imogen are to be added to the list of characters of the gentler cast. The former was not one of her most popular, probably not one of her most effective, performances, for Lear is said to have been almost the only play in which, when both were on the stage, the brother made a stronger impression than the sister. The pure, gentle dignity of Imogen must have found in her a most effective representative.

In the autumn of 1783, about a year before Dr. Johnson’s death, Mrs. Siddons, at his own request, paid him a visit, which was several times repeated. He expressed a strong desire to see her in Queen Katherine, his favourite character among Shakspeare’s females. He was not so gratified; for the play was not brought forward until November 28, 1788, after an absence from the stage of near half a century. This, like Lady Macbeth, we must regard as one of Mrs. Siddons’s peculiar characters. “It was an era,” Mr. Campbell says, “not only in Mrs. Siddons’s history, but in the fortune of the play as an acting piece; for certainly, in the history of all female performance on the British stage, there is no specific tradition of any excellence at all approaching to hers as Queen Katherine.” The two principal scenes belonging to the part are strikingly contrasted. The high mind and majestic deportment of the actress, and the sarcasm which she pours out on the Cardinal, render the Trial Scene one of the most effective on the stage; and it has fortunately been preserved from oblivion by the pencil of Harlowe. But the last scene, in the sick chamber, was among the strongest proofs of Mrs. Siddons’s close adherence to nature, and one of her greatest triumphs over the difficulties of her art, enhanced as they were by the extravagant dimensions of the modern theatres. It may be mentioned to show her confidence in her own judgment as to the truth of nature that, though the audience in the gallery sometimes asked her to speak louder, she never obeyed the call; but left the architect responsible for any failure of effect, rather than herself overstep the bounds of propriety in the most solemn event of human life.

Mrs. Siddons quitted Drury Lane for the season 1789–90, in consequence of the difficulty of obtaining her salary while the treasury was in the hands of Sheridan. She was induced by promises to return inthe following season; but a weak state of health prevented her playing more than seven nights, and she appeared in no new character; nor, during the summer of 1791, did she act on any provincial stage. She returned to Drury Lane in 1794, after the rebuilding of the theatre, and remained there until 1802; when the impossibility of rescuing the reward of her labours from that “drowning gulf,” as she justly calls Sheridan in one of her letters, drove her away finally. The most remarkable of her new characters, during this period of eight years, were Millwood, in ‘George Barnwell,’ and Agnes, in ‘Fatal Curiosity,’ both plays of Lillo; Mrs. Haller; Elvira in ‘Pizarro,’ which, in spite of the demerits of the play, she rendered one of her most popular characters; and Hermione, in the ‘Winter’s Tale,’ her last new part, which she acted for the first time, March 25, 1802. The statue scene was one of her most extraordinary performances, both for its illusion while she remained motionless, and for the effect produced by her descent from the pedestal, and recognition of her daughter Perdita.

In one of her early performances of this character she met with an accident which might well have ended fatally. The muslin draperies in which she was enveloped caught fire from a lamp; fortunately, one of the scene-men saw and extinguished it before it spread. Her gratitude for his interposition is eloquently expressed in her correspondence; and her warmth of feeling was subsequently evinced in the pains which she took to procure for the man’s son, who had deserted from the army, remission from what she justly calls “the horrid torture and disgrace of the lash,” and in the lively pleasure which she expresses in the prospect of succeeding.

Upon her final departure from Drury Lane, Mrs. Siddons formed an engagement at Covent Garden, where she appeared for the first time, September 27, 1803. She continued there until June 29, 1812, on which day she bid farewell to the stage. During this time she performed in no new characters, nor is any circumstance which requires notice recorded of this part of her professional life. In her last season we find that, of her earlier characters, she performed Isabella, in ‘The Fatal Marriage,’ twice; Isabella, in ‘Measure for Measure,’ seven times; Euphrasia, twice; Belvidera, six times; and Mrs. Beverley, four times. It may perhaps be taken as an indication of that by which she wished chiefly to be remembered, that she played Lady Macbeth ten times, and chose it for her farewell. Queen Katherine she played six times; Constance and Volumnia, four times each; Elvira, five times; Mrs. Haller, twice; Hermione, four times.On her last appearance the house was crowded to excess, and the excitement of the occasion was testified by a general demand that the play should be stopped after Lady Macbeth’s appearance in the sleeping scene. Mrs. Siddons returned to the boards on various occasions, chiefly for her brother Charles’s benefit: her last performance was in the part of Lady Randolph, June 9, 1819.

In giving, in addition to what we have already said, a short general notice of the professional merits of Mrs. Siddons, we shall confine our remarks chiefly to those characters which better suited her maturer years, in which alone a large majority of our readers can have seen her. She was throughout the tragic department the unrivalled actress of her time; though in such parts as Belvidera, Desdemona, Cordelia, &c., the power of exciting the sympathy of an audience might have been shared with her by Mrs. Cibber and other of her predecessors, or by her successors, Miss O’Neil or Miss Kemble. But in one respect she stands alone in her profession: she was the most intellectual of actresses. She was a person of deep thought, and an habitual student of nature with a view to the perfection of her art; and that as much, or more, in advanced life, than when she had her reputation to make or to enjoy in the first years of her celebrity. Mrs. Siddons sat day after day in her study, looking at Shakspeare and whatever bore upon him, not as if he were the mere poet of the stage, furnishing an outline to be filled up by her peculiar powers, but as if he were the high priest and expositor of human nature, whose lessons it was the serious business of her life to learn, and having learned, to teach.

We shall not add to what we have already said of her Queen Katherine, or Lady Macbeth, except one circumstance, illustrative of the above position. Mrs. Siddons, who repeatedly read ‘Macbeth’ before the most competent judges, made a deeper and more lasting impression, not only in her own part, but in the other characters, than did the representation on the stage by her brother and herself, with all the advantages of dress and the illusion of scenery. The audience, at her readings, consisting of men and women of taste and literature, professed never to have understood Shakspeare so thoroughly before.

Her Isabella, in ‘Measure for Measure,’ claims a short notice. This play in Garrick’s reign was acted occasionally to empty benches in the dull part of the season; but neither the manager himself, nor his leading performers, condescended to appear in so grave and sermonizing a piece. Even when played by Kemble and his sister, it did not draw crowded houses; but it ensured a critical and enlightenedaudience. The theatre seldom contained so many men of the first reputation for taste and literature as when that play was performed. John Kemble’s mind was framed in the same mould with his sister’s; he gave to a sententious and philosophic part dignity and interest, where an ordinary actor would preach his audience to sleep. The scene between the Duke in the disguise of a Confessor, and Isabella, excited neither tears nor rapturous applause, but intense interest, and breathless attention. The Duke’s exposition of his project is long, her intervening speeches short, and not emphatic; so that such a scene bids fair to be calledprosing. But the intense and intelligent expression in her eyes, and more perhaps in her mouth, the great seat of expression, filled up whatever was wanting: the gradually increasing, but as yet far from complete comprehension of the device, and of its consistency with her own purity, marked without words what was passing in her mind: but when she exclaims “The image of it gives me content already, and I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection,” the burst of perfect understanding, the lighting up of every feature, and the tones of sudden joy, produced a corresponding effect in the spectators, which scenes of intense pathos could scarcely surpass in effect. Mrs. Siddons’s power over the mind was as great as over the passions.

Another extraordinary performance was her Millwood, in ‘George Barnwell.’ She took that part, which had never been played by a first-rate actress, in hopes that she might be of service to her brother Charles, then a young actor, who was to be brought forward as Barnwell. In the early scenes the severity of her blandishments bordered on the ludicrous; she was more like Barnwell’s mother than his mistress: but in her scene of dissimulation with Thorowgood, and in her subsequent arrest and diabolically triumphant avowal of the motive of her conduct through life, the desire to revenge her wrongs on the opposite sex, she pourtrayed wickedness with grand and appalling force. Her thundering exclamation, “I know you, and I hate you all; I expect no mercy, and I ask for none,” was made with a withering effect. The scene in ‘Fatal Curiosity,’ in which Agnes suggests to her husband the murder of their unknown son, was another of her wonderful exhibitions: in Mr. Campbell’s words, “it made the flesh of the spectator creep.”

Mrs. Siddons is said to have thought well of her own talents for comedy; and her reading of Shakspeare’s characters of low humour was admirable. She played at different times Katherine, in ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ and Rosalind; as well as Mrs. Oakley, and afew other characters of the modern drama. There seems to have been nothing against her success in genteel comedy but a deficiency of animal spirits. Her delivery of the level conversation in tragedy was easy, graceful, and refined. Her representation of the early scenes in ‘The Gamester,’ where she had merely to personate an elegant and highbred woman, bearing up against present anxiety and impending misfortune, was as attractive and as finished as her deep tragedy in the sequel was pathetic and harrowing. And in the first scenes of Mrs. Haller, the charm of her manners and delivery imparted interest even to the dull detail of a housekeeper’s weekly routine.

We subjoin a list of the parts which Mrs. Siddons performed in London. The reader will be surprised to find how many of them are in plays all but forgotten, and utterly unworthy of her talents. In those marked (*) she made her first appearance for her own benefit: in those marked (†), for John Kemble’s.

Of Mrs. Siddons’s private life it is not necessary for us to speak at length. She had a full share of domestic troubles; and suffered the most poignant sorrow which could have befallen her affectionate temper, in the successive deaths of two lovely daughters in the prime of youth, and of her eldest son at a more advanced age. Nor was she exempted by her brilliant success and large gains from great anxiety upon pecuniary matters, and from the necessity of diligent labour at times when rest would have been most grateful to a distressed spirit, and a body weakened by frequent indisposition. And she made it her boast that she had never wilfully disappointed either a manager or the public; and that in point of punctuality, she had always beenan honest actress. But Mr. Siddons lost money in some unfortunate speculations; and this, combined with the extreme difficulty of extracting from Sheridan her salary, or even the proceeds of her benefits, kept Mrs. Siddons poor for many years. It is however gratifying to know that the evening of her life was spent in affluence.

In social intercourse Mrs. Siddons commanded the respect of all, the admiration and love of those who knew her intimately. To a constitutional want of animal spirits, and to a fear of that presumptuous intrusion to which actresses are often exposed, we may attribute a gravity, not to say severity of manner, from which distant observers sometimes inferred a corresponding severity of character. That this was not the case, that she was benevolent, cheerful, and affectionately interested in the welfare of all who enjoyed her friendship, is shown by the testimony of many, and by the evidence of her own actions.

To be courted by the rich and noble is not the best proof or rewardeven of professional merit; and no one ever was less disposed than Mrs. Siddons to act the part of what is calleda lion. But it should be mentioned that her acquaintance was eagerly cultivated among the highest of the land; and that she was personally esteemed by George III. and his queen, and often summoned to attend on their private circle. She possessed a still higher honour, and one which she is said to have esteemed more highly, in the admiration and friendship of Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, Fox, and other intellectual ornaments of the age.

After quitting the stage, Mrs. Siddons gave public readings of poetry at the Argyle Rooms, and also, by special invitation from the Universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. At home her readings of Shakspeare were the delight of large and frequent parties, till within a year or two of her death. The latter years of her life were spent, the winter months at her house in London, the summer months at some watering-place, and in visits to her numerous friends. Time laid his touch gently on her noble face and person; and to the end of life she looked some years younger than her age, and preserved her mental powers unimpaired. She died June 8, 1831, in her seventy-sixth year.

We need hardly refer to the Lives of Messrs. Boaden and Campbell. The interest of the latter is much increased by the critical and other writings of Mrs. Siddons, with which it is interspersed.

[Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, from Sir J. Reynolds.]

Engraved by E. Scriven.SIR W. HERSCHELL.From a Crayon Picture by the late J. Russell, Esqre. R.A. in the possession of Sir John Herschell.Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

HERSCHEL.

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