Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography; Siddons, Sarah, 1755-1831
“The noisome smells, and the multitudes of shocking and most
miserable objects, made me resolve never to stir out but
to my business. I like not the people either; they are all
ostentation and insincerity, and in their ideas of finery
very like the French, but not so cleanly; and they not only
speak, but think coarsely. This is in confidence; therefore,
your fingers on your lips, I pray. They are tenacious of their
country to a degree of folly that is very laughable, and
would call me the blackest of ingrates were they to know my
sentiments of them. I have got a thousand pounds among them
this summer. I always acknowledge myself obliged to them, but
I cannot love them. I know but one among them that can in any
degree atone for the barbarism of the rest, who thinks there
are other means of expressing esteem besides forcing people to
eat and to drink, the doing which to a most offensive degree
they call Irish hospitality. I long to be at home, sitting
quietly in the little snug parlour, where I had last the
pleasure, or rather the pain, of seeing you that night. For
the first time in my life I wished not to see you. I dreaded
it, and with reason. I knew (which was the case) I should not
recover that cruel farewell for several days.
“Oh! my dear friend, do the pleasures of life compensate for
the pangs? I think not. Some people place the whole happiness
of life in the pleasures of imagination, in building castles;
for my part, I am not one that builds very magnificent ones.
Nay; I don’t build any castles, but cottages without end. May
the great Disposer of all events but permit me to spend the
evening of my toilsome, bustling day in a cottage, where I may
sometimes have the converse and society which will make me more
worthy those imperishable habitations which are prepared for
the spirits of just men made perfect! Yes, let me take up my
rest in this world near my beloved Langford. You know this has
been my castle any time these four years. And I am making a
little snug party. Mr. Nott and my dear sister I have secured,
and make no doubt of gaining a few others. Is not this a
delightful scheme?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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