boys was the father of the beautiful Mrs. Scott Siddons of the present day.
Mrs. Siddons was very fond of children. Campbell tells a story of his once leaving his little boy, aged six, with her, when she was stopping in Paris. When he returned, he found them both in animated conversation. She had been amusing him with all sorts of stories, which she told admirably. The evening before she had been to a fashionable party and offended everyone by the austerity of her manners.
Her letters about her grandchildren are full of simple grandmotherly love, naturally expressed. She wrote from Broadstairs in 1806:—
"My dear Harry, I have very great pleasure in telling you that your dear little ones are quite well. The bathing agrees with them perfectly. They are exceedingly improved in looks and appetite, though their stomachs turn a little, poor dears, at the sight of the machines; but, indeed, upon the whole, the dipping is pretty well got over, and they look so beautiful after it, it would do your heart good to see them. I assure you they are the belles of Broadstairs. Their nurse is very good-humoured to them. She is certainly not a beauty, but they like her as well as if she were a Venus. Never were little souls so easily managed, or so little troublesome."
The great actress would boast with more pride of the effect she produced on a little girl during the performance of Jane Shore, than of her greatest triumphs. In the last scenes of the play, when the unfortunate heroine, destitute and starving, exclaims in an agony of suffering, "I have not tasted bread for three days," a little voice was heard, broken by sobs, exclaiming, "Madam, madam! do take my orange, if you please,"
