quitted the London stage and became manager of a provincial theatre.
Frances, the great actress's second sister, inherited a considerable portion of the family beauty, but little dramatic power, and what she had was rendered inoperative by her unconquerable shyness. Mrs. Siddons first brought her out at Bath. The papers vented their spleen against the elder sister on the younger. It was natural, they said, that she should wish to bring her forward, but they hoped she had learned, by the utter failure of her attempt, not to "cram incapable actresses down the throats of the public." One of the theatrical critics, Steevens, fell in love with her; but his proposals being rejected, he became her bitterest enemy.
Mrs. Siddons writes to tell Dr. Whalley of this love affair:—"My sister Frances is not married, and, I believe, there is very little reason to suppose she will be soon. In point of circumstances, I believe, the gentleman you mention would be a desirable husband; but I hear so much of his ill-temper, and know so much of his caprice, that, though my sister, I believe, likes him, I cannot wish her gentle spirit linked with his."
Mrs. Siddons had judged her sister's suitor exactly. The engagement was soon broken off, and the girl married Mr. Twiss, another dramatic critic, whom Fanny Kemble, in her Records of a Girlhood, describes as a grim-visaged, gaunt-figured, kind-hearted gentleman and profound scholar, who, it was said, at one time nourished a hopeless passion for Mrs. Siddons. The Twisses later set up a genteel seminary at Bath, where fashionable young ladies were sent "to be bettered." Mrs. Twiss died in October 1822, and Mr.
