Her acrimony is almost incomprehensible. After the expressions used in the above letter we can quite understand how she made herself unpopular. She might have wished secrecy kept, but she was not the woman to hide what she felt. She is unjust also in the statement that Irishmen “not only think but speak coarsely.” On this, as on other occasions, she allowed her wounded vanity to dim her power of observation. The punishment, however, came sharp and sudden, and destroyed her happiness for many a day. While Mrs. Siddons was acting in Dublin, Jackson, the manager of the Edinburgh Theatre, opened communications with her with a view to an engagement. Finding it difficult to come to terms, he at last travelled over himself, but the history of the negotiation from beginning to end makes us understand Mrs. Siddons’s unpopularity with all her managers. There is too resolute an adherence to her own interests, too much of a calm, cold superiority. She “haggled” and bargained over every step, until Jackson almost gave the whole business up in despair. Encouraged, however, FitzGerald tells us, by a purse of £200, which some noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland had liberally made up to assist him in making the engagement, he at last assented to her terms. The Siddons’ demands for nine nights’ performance, besides a “clear benefit,” was £400. They soon, however, heard of the £200 subscription, and Mr. Siddons then wrote to know if that sum was to be included in the £400, or if it were to come under the head of an extra emolument. The manager was explicit in his statement that the £200 was intended for his benefit. On this Mrs. Siddons announced that she did not wish for any given sum, but would take half the clear receipts. Poor Jackson was obliged to agree to this breach of contract, as he had already gone so far with his patrons in Edinburgh. The history of the negotiation, however, is not pleasant reading for Mrs. Siddons’s admirers, especially when we find later that she contrived to have the £200 subscription paid over to her without the knowledge of the manager, and that at the end of her engagement Jackson found himself a loser. The “charges of the house” were put too low. Actors like Pope, King, and Miss Farren had always allowed something handsome on settlement. Nothing was to be obtained from Mrs. Siddons.