Income wou’d afford, without a chance, _at least_, of being able to _cover_ these expenses, which is all I desire! and therefore I am to fulfil my Engagement on my brother’s Terms.” In November, therefore, we find her making her way by slow stages to Edinburgh. She stopped for several days at Kirby Moorside, with Sir Ralph and Lady Noel, and Lady Byron. In spite of nervousness and fatigue, she delighted her Edinburgh audiences. She had no reason to make a charge against her northern friends of unfaithfulness. CHAPTER XVI. OLD AGE. In 1817 Mrs. Siddons, anxious, for the sake of her daughter Cecilia, to see more society, left her Country retreat, Westbourne Farm, where so many hours of repose snatched from the turmoil of her professional life had been passed, and took a house in Upper Baker Street. It is the last house on the east side overlooking the Regent’s Park, and has a small lawn and garden behind. On the front, over the doorway, is a medallion stating that “Here Mrs. Siddons, the actress, lived from 1817 to 1831.” When the houses in Cornwall Terrace were about to be brought close to the gate of the park, Mrs. Siddons appealed to the Prince Regent, who had ever remained her firm and courteous friend. He immediately gave orders that her view over the Park should not be shut off. The house, which is still unchanged in its internal arrangements, is now used as the estate office of the Portman property. The room she built out as a studio for modelling is screened off into compartments with desks for the transaction of business. That is really the only change that has been made. It is an old-fashioned, comfortable house, panelled in dark oak. The approach to the staircase has steps ascending and descending, and the stairs themselves twist round corners, off which branch unexpected passages, until they reach the first floor, where to the right opens the dining-room, looking on the little garden, and beyond to the Park. There, between the Grecian pillars with their honey-suckle pediment, once hung the portrait of her brother John as Hotspur; now the space looks desolate and bare. Here she lived with her daughter Cecilia and Patty Wilkinson, her attached friend and companion. Some among us are old enough to remember having heard of her pleasant parties where all that was intellectual and delightful in the London of her day was assembled. There she would sometimes, to her intimate friends, give recitations of her favourite parts, having by this time relinquished doing so in public. Miss Edgeworth describes one of these readings:—