The enthusiastic young actor goes on:—
She stood alone on her height of excellence. Her acting was perfect,
and, as I recall it, I do not wonder, novice as I was, at my perturbation
when on the stage with her. But in the progress of the play I
gradually regained more and more my self-possession, and in the last
scene, as she stood by the side wing, waiting for the cue of her
entrance, on my utterance of the words, "My wife and sister! Well,
well! there is but one pang more, and then farewell world!" she
raised her hands, clapping loudly and calling out: "Bravo, Sir,
bravo!" in sight of part of the audience, who joined in her applause.
On that evening I was engaged to a ball, "where all the beauties"—not
of Verona, but of Newcastle—were to meet. Mrs. Siddons,
after the play, sent to me to say, when I was dressed, she would be
glad to see me in her room. On going in, she "wished," she said,
"to give me a few words of advice before taking leave of me. You
are in the right way," she said, "but remember what I say—study,
study, study, and do not marry till you are thirty. I remember
what it was to be obliged to study at nearly your age with a young
family about me. Beware of that: keep your mind on your art, do
not remit your study, and you are certain to succeed. I know you
are expected at a ball to-night, so I will not detain you, but do not
forget my words—study well, and God bless you." Her words lived
with me, and often in moments of despondency have come to cheer me.
Her acting was a revelation to me, which ever after had its influence
on me in the study of my art. Ease, grace, untiring energy through
all the variations of human passion, blended into that grand and
massive style, had been with her the result of patient application. On
first witnessing her wonderful impersonations I may say with the poet:
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
And I can only liken the effect they produced on me, in developing new trains of thought, to the awakening power that Michael Angelo's sketch of the Colossal head in the Farnesina is said to have had on the mind of Raphael.
