to him in a low voice, ‘Mr. Young, recollect yourself,’ that he recovered speech. Leigh Hunt calls her sleep-walking scene and her stare of misery by the corpse of Beverley two of the sublimest pieces of acting on the English stage, and says that one of the marks she bears of a great actor is that she seems unconscious that there is a crowd called a pit waiting to applaud her, or that there are a dozen fiddlers waiting for her exit. If she had any shortcoming, he writes, it was in the amatory pathetic.
At the outset of her theatrical career she expressed a wish, neither too generous nor too loyal, that Mrs. Crawford would withdraw from the stage and leave the field clear for herself. She said, with some justice, that the public had a sort of delight in mortifying their favourites by setting up new idols, and added that she herself had been thrice threatened with an eclipse, first by means of Miss Brunton (Lady Craven), next by Miss Smith (Mrs. Bartley), and lastly by Miss O'Neil, but was not yet extinguished. She left unmentioned Mrs. Jordan in parts such as Rosalind, a more formidable rival or successor. She was never easy after she left the stage, and used to complain to Rogers, ‘Oh, dear! at this time I used to be thinking of going to the theatre.’ She was jealous of the dinner given to John Kemble, a far inferior actor to herself, on his retirement from the stage, and said, ‘Well, perhaps in the next world women will be more valued than they are in this’ (Rogers, Table Talk, pp. 188–9, ed. Dyce).
Mrs. Siddons's private character was excellent, and she retained to the last the esteem of her friends and of the aristocratic world. Of Horace Walpole she made a convert. Washington Irving found every disposition in her to be gracious, but said that she reminded him of Scott's ‘knights’ who
Carved the meat with their gloves of steel
And drank the wine through their helmets barred.
In her conversation she was apt, like her brother John, to talk in rhythmic phrase. Scott, whom she used to visit, was accustomed to mimic her speech to an attendant at dinner:
‘You've brought me water, boy; I asked for beer.’
She certainly, throughout life, inspired more admiration than affection; she had the manner to command, but not the tact to manage. Determined to make money for her children, she was sharp in money matters, quarrelled with her Dublin managers, and incurred, in a wider circle, an unjust reputation for stinginess. The plea advanced by Johnson in favour of Garrick that ‘he was very poor when he began life, so when he came to have money’ was unskilful in giving it away, may with equal justice be urged in her favour. Her obtrusion of private affairs upon the public ear prejudiced her in the eyes of many; and the press, for the most part, treated her with no superfluous generosity. An indiscreet and impulsive friendship between her and a fencing-master named Galindo caused the latter's wife to publish ‘Mrs. Galindo's Letter to Mrs. Siddons; being a circumstantial detail of Mrs. Siddons's life for the last seven years, with several of her letters,’ London, 1809, 8vo. This charged Mrs. Siddons with improper connections with Galindo, but established nothing worse than grave indiscretion.
Her physical gifts were great. Her face was noble; her tall figure, which was at first slender and eminently graceful, was always dignified and statuesque. In her later days she became unwieldy, and had to be assisted when she rose. To divert attention from this, other actresses on the stage received like attentions.
A replica of Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the ‘Tragic Muse’ is at Grosvenor House. Portraits of her by Sir Thomas Lawrence are in the National Gallery and in the National Portrait Gallery. A portrait by Gainsborough is in the National Gallery, and one attributed to the same artist in the Garrick Club, which has besides two portraits of her by George Henry Harlow [q. v.] as Lady Macbeth. Engraved portraits of her in the National Art Library, South Kensington, are a whole-length by W. Hamilton, with her son, in Isabella; a second by the same artist in the ‘Grecian Daughter,’ both engraved by J. Coldwell, and one by Reynolds as the ‘Tragic Muse,’ engraved by F. Harward, A.R.A. A portrait by T. Beach of Bath has been engraved by W. Dickinson; one by T. Lawrence, æt. 13, engraved by J. R. Smith. A portrait of her as Sigismunda, assigned to Wheatley, is of dubious authority. A sketch of her by Lawrence, in the same character, has been engraved. A portrait by C. Turner, after Lawrence, is given in Boaden's ‘Memoirs.’ A miniature of her by Horace Hone, engraved by Bartolozzi, is said to have served for the likeness in the ‘Thespian Dictionary.’ A coloured print of her as Lady Macbeth, after Harlow, serves as frontispiece to Terry's ‘British Theatrical Gallery,’ 1825. Many likenesses are to be found in theatrical works. She herself executed busts of herself and of her brother John. A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ 5th ser. i. 77, recollected a bust of herself at Newnham in Oxford. Professor
