Amongst this “higgledy-piggledy,” we are suddenly struck by a beautiful young creature, whose arrival seems to cause a flutter among the fashionables. She is accompanied by a handsome fair man and two beautiful children. This is the new actress who is turning every head. From Lawrence’s coloured crayon drawing, done of her during this stay at Bath, we can form a distinct idea of what she was like. He has drawn her three-quarter face, black velvet hat and plume, white muslin cavalier tie, brown riding spencer with big buttons and lappels turned back. Under the shadow of the hat is the refined, noble face, with delicate, arched eye-brows, aquiline nose, finely modelled mouth, and round cleft chin. She is not yet the tragic muse of Reynolds, nor the full-orbed, fashionable beauty of Gainsborough, but a lovely young Diana, with frank, large, out-looking eyes, and a pretty air of defiance and resolution, the brightness undimmed by the anxiety and hard work of later days; the young beauty is evidently determined to conquer the universe. It was a world strangely at issue with her own ideas into which she had stepped—a dandified, ceremonious world, full of witty and wicked ladies and gentlemen, who played cards and backed horses; but, mercifully for her, a world at the same time full of childish enthusiasm, an age of pallor and fainting and hysterics. Grown men and women sitting up at night weeping and laughing over the woes and escapades of Clarissa Harlowe and Evelina; ladies writing to Richardson: “Pray, Sir, make Lovelace happy; you can so easily do it. Pray reform him! Will you not save a soul?” The same vivid interest was taken in dramatic situations. It was a common thing for women—and, indeed, men also—to be carried out fainting; and as to the crying and sobbing, it was generally audible all over the house. In a pathetic piece, Miss Burney describes two young ladies, who sat in a box above her, being both so much shocked at the death of Douglas that “they both burst into a loud fit of roaring, and sobbed on afterwards for almost half the farce.” Needless to say, therefore, the enthusiasm a beautiful young actress like Mrs. Siddons would create. It was not, however, immediate; she was obliged, as we have seen, to personate subordinate characters, and was obliged to act in comedy that did not suit her. Thursdays were the nights of the Cotillon balls at Bath, and of the assemblies at Lady Miller’s, of Bath Easton vase celebrity, which are alluded to by Horace Walpole: “They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, before the balls, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase, dressed with pink ribbons and myrtles, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful ten candidates acknowledge.”