It sends a pang through our heart as we hear Mrs. Siddons say in later life, with a sigh, to Rogers the poet: “After I became famous, none of my sisters loved me so well.” What a price to pay for fame! “Conversation” Sharp was frequently consulted by her upon private affairs. She wept to him over the ingratitude her sisters showed her. Money was lent and never repaid; the prestige of her name was borrowed to obtain theatrical engagements, but she never was thanked; every obligation seemed only to cause a feeling of bitterness. Perhaps the fault lay a little on her side as well as on theirs. Tact and graciousness were not her strong points. She was absent-minded, all her attention being concentrated on the study and comprehension of her profession, which gave her a proud, self-contained manner, alienating unconsciously those who surrounded her and were dependent on her. Her children adored her, but her brothers and sisters stood, to a certain extent, in awe of her. All of them, stimulated by the examples of the two eldest, went on the stage, but none possessed her genius, or John Kemble’s talent and industry. The affectionate comradeship in art that existed between Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble is one of the pleasantest features in both their lives. He was educated, as we have seen, principally at the Roman Catholic College at Douay, where he became remarkable for his elocution, every now and then astonishing his masters and schoolfellows by delivering speeches in scholastic Latin, and learning with the greatest facility books of Homer and odes of Horace. We are told that his noble cast of countenance, his deep melodious voice, and the dignity of his delivery, impressed his comrades considerably; especially in the scene between Brutus and Cassius, which he got up for their benefit. It is a curious proof of his want of facility that, although he was extremely fond of the study of language, grammar being all his life his favourite _light reading_, he never was able to master any language but his own. He read Italian, Spanish, and French, but spoke none of them, in spite of his education in France and his long residence later at Lausanne. He had no ear, and it never could have been an easy task to him to learn the rhythm of Shakespeare. We know the story of old Shaw, conductor of the Covent Garden orchestra, who vainly endeavoured to teach him the song in the piece of _Richard Cœur de Lion_, “O Richard—O mon roi!” “Mr. Kemble, Mr. Kemble, you are murdering the time, Sir!” cried the exasperated musician; on which Kemble made one of the few jokes ever perpetrated by him: “Very well, Sir, and you are for ever beating it.”