Physical disabilities also began now to interfere with her dramatic effects. Alas! for the days when an “exquisite, fragile, creature” acted Venus in Garrick’s procession, and with her rosy lips whispered promises of sweetmeats into little Tommy Dibdin’s ear. The actress had grown stout and unwieldy in person. When she acted Isabella, and knelt to the Duke, imploring mercy for her brother, two attendants had to come forward to help her to rise; and to make this appear correct, the same ceremony was gone through with a young actress who performed the same part and did not need any assistance whatever. By caricatures and portraits done of her at the time we can see how unshapely she had become. Conventionality and hardness replaced the old spontaneity and pathos; the action of the arms was more pronounced, the voice was unduly raised, and the deficiency in beauty and charm was supplied by energy and rant. Mrs. Siddons was only two years older than her brother, but her physical and mental gifts had deteriorated much more rapidly. The fact of the sister’s dramatic power having been a natural gift, and his the result of industry and hard work, made hers fail more completely with waning strength. Besides all the disabilities of advancing age, that terrible fear of being supplanted was ever before her eyes. Mrs. Jordan had some years before snatched the laurels from her brow in Rosalind; now rumours were wafted across the Channel of a young and lovely actress, Miss O’Neill, who had taken all hearts captive as Juliet (a part Mrs. Siddons could never personate satisfactorily); the matchless beauty of form of the young aspirant, her sensibility and tenderness were the theme of every tongue. “To hear these people talk, one would think _I_ had never drawn a tear,” she said sadly. The old sensitiveness and pride remained. She accused the public of taking pleasure in mortifying their old favourites by setting up new idols; “I have been three times threatened with eclipse, first by means of Miss Brunton (afterwards Lady Craven), next by means of Miss Smith, and lastly by means of Miss O’Neill; nevertheless,” she added, “I am not yet extinguished.” Mrs. Siddons had no right to complain. She had drunk fully the draught of success and appreciation, and had been singularly exempt from rivalry in her own particular walk. No public, however indulgent, can save an actress from the penalties of old age. She herself had supplanted Mrs. Crawford, and not very gently. The transition point—the last in her life—had been reached, the chapter of active professional life was closed for ever, yet she could not resign herself to accept the decrepitude and inactivity of old age. “I feel as if I were mounting the first steps of a ladder conducting me to another world,” she sighed. Moore mentions meeting her at the house of Rogers: