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DUBLIN AND EDINBURGH
87

they sit reading The Fatal Marriage, crying and roaring all the time. May the curses of an insulted nation pursue the gentlemen of the College, the gentlemen of the Bar, and the peers and peeresses that hissed her on the second night. True it is that Mr. Garrick never could make anything of her, and pronounced her below mediocrity; true it is the London audience did not like her; but what of that?"

Her consciousness of the antagonism that existed against her in the press and amongst the public made her stay in the capital by no means either pleasant or successful, and she was glad to start with the party which Daly had got together to go the round of the country. It consisted of the manager and his future wife, Miss Barsanti, the two Kembles, Miss Younge, Digges, Miss Philipps, and Mrs. Melnotte, wife of Pratt Melnotte, of Bath celebrity.

An amusing account of the tour has been left by Bernard the actor, who happened to be in Ireland at the time. The solemn Kembles certainly seem out of place in the rollicking fun, and we can imagine Mrs. Siddons's stately disgust when a gentleman from the pit called out, "Sally, me jewel, how are you?" or, as occurred several times, when a general dance took place in the gallery as soon as the orchestra began.

Mrs. Siddons does not seem to have had any occasion for changing later the first opinion she formed of the country, for we find her writing confidentially to Mr. Whalley from Cork, on the 29th of August, that she thinks the city of Dublin a sink of filthiness. "The noisome smells, and the multitudes of shocking and most miserable objects, made me resolve never to stir out but to my business. I like not the people either; they are all ostentation and insincerity, and in their