Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography; Siddons, Sarah, 1755-1831
The younger sons of her son George Siddons (who had obtained a Government
post at Calcutta), were being educated with their sisters in England, and
always spent their holidays with their grandmother, Mrs. Siddons. The
youngest of these three school-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,”
and the audience and the actress beheld, in one of the stage boxes, a
little girl holding her out an orange.
A lady, now alive, recalls to mind, when she was very young, being taken
to pay a visit to “the great Mrs. Siddons.” She long after remembered
those wonderful eyes, and particularly the long silky eye-lashes, which
she noticed were of extraordinary length, and curled upwards in a
beautiful curve. On being told that the child was obliged to go away to
the country, and would have no opportunity of hearing her on the stage,
she kindly said she would recite for her, and did so there and then.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account