limore was sufficiently tipsy to have courage enough to fight his lord and master, John Kemble, who was elevated enough to defend himself, and generous enough to forget the affair next morning.
Other parts were declined by her for other reasons. Colman had written an epilogue to Mr. Jephson's Julia, which she refused to speak because she declared it to be "coarse;" and the part of Cleopatra, she said she never would act, because "she would hate herself if she were to play it as she thought it should be played." And there she was right; the "Serpent of Old Nile" was not within her range.
One of her admirers tells us that her majestic and imposing person, and the commanding character of her beauty, militated against the effect she produced in the part of Mrs. Haller. "No man alive or dead," said he, "would have dared to take a liberty with her; wicked she might be, but weak she could not be, and when she told the story of her ill-conduct in the play nobody believed her." Another eye-witness, speaking of "the fair penitent," said that it was worth sitting out the piece for her scene with Romont alone, to see "such a splendid animal in such a magnificent rage."
And yet, what a kind heart it was to an erring sister! "Charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson," she writes, referring to Perdita Robinson, "I pity her from the bottom of my soul." And what a generous helping hand she stretched out to her younger colleagues. When Miss Mellon, twenty years her junior, was acting with her at Liverpool, Mrs. Siddons one morning at rehearsal turned to an actor, a friend of hers, who had known her for years, and said:
"There is a young woman here whom I am sure I have seen at Drury Lane."
