"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)Doran, Dr. (John)
History
"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)
Doran, Dr. (John)
Actors -- Great Britain; Theater -- Great Britain -- History
This led to the secession of both actors from the company. Mr.
Siddons went,--the world before him where to choose; Sarah
Kemble,--to the family of Mr. Greatheed, of Guy's Cliff,
Warwickshire. "She hired herself," says the _Secret History of
the Green Room_, published in the very zenith of her fame,--"as
lady's maid to Mrs. Greatheed, at £10 per annum." "Her station,"
says Campbell, "was humble, but not servile, and her _principal_
employment was to read to the elder Mr. Greatheed." She probably
fulfilled the double duty,--no disparagement at a time when the maids
of ladies were often decayed ladies themselves.
[Illustration: (Mrs Siddons)]
Old Roger Kemble is said to have been very unwilling that any of
his children should follow that profession, in exercising which
he had wandered far, suffered much, and profited sparingly. The
unwillingness was natural, but he seems to have put it in practice
when too late;--after he had allowed his attractive young people
to enjoy some of the perilous delights of the stage. There are bills
extant which show that some of them, at least, were playing in his
company, when they were of tender years. When Sarah Kemble went to
Guy's Cliff, it was with no idea of permanently leaving the stage;
and if it be true, as alleged in the series of dramatic biographies,
published by Symonds at the beginning of the present century, that
Roger Kemble apprenticed his daughter Elizabeth to a mantua-maker
in Leominster, and Frances to a milliner in Worcester, he narrowly
missed marring their good fortunes. A similar vocation could not keep
Anne Oldfield from the stage, and though Elizabeth and Frances Kemble
were not actresses of extraordinary merit, they had not to regret
that they abandoned the vocations chosen for them by their parents,
for that which was followed by their parents themselves.
From Guy's Cliff, Sarah Kemble was ultimately taken by her
persevering wooer, to whom her father reluctantly gave her at Trinity
Church, Coventry, on the 6th of November 1773. The bride was in her
nineteenth year. The married couple continued but for a brief period
in the Kemble company. A month after the marriage, the name of "Mrs.
Siddons" was, for the first time, in the playbill, at Worcester,[54]
to Charlotte Rusport, in the "West Indian," and Leonora, in the
"Padlock." Shortly after, Roger Kemble saw Mr. and Mrs. Siddons
depart for Chamberlain and Crump's company, in Cheltenham. Here
Mrs. Siddons at once took her place. Her Belvidera excited universal
admiration. Lord Ailesbury, the cousin of the Pretender's wife, the
Countess of Albany, mentioned her to Garrick; and Lord Dungarvon's
daughter, Miss Boyle, directed her wardrobe, lent her many of her own
dresses, and helped to make others for her with her own hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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