Ireland eagerly invited the new actress, and she crossed from Holyhead to Dublin in a storm, which she looked on or endured with a "pleasing terror." Landing in the middle of a wet night in June, no tavern even would then receive a woman and a stranger, and it was with difficulty that her companion Brereton, a promising Irish actor, whom she had instructed in Jaffier, procured accommodation for her, in the house where he himself lodged. She played with equal success at Cork as at Dublin, particularly in Zara. From the former place she writes to Dr. Whalley:--"I have sat to a young man in this place who has made a small full length of me in Isabella, upon the first entrance of Biron ... he has succeeded to admiration. I think it more like me than any I have ever yet seen." Who was this unnamed artist? Where is this young Isabella? Mrs. Siddons returned to England, richer by £1000 by her Irish summer excursion, and with an antipathy against the people, which could only be momentary in the daughter of a lady born in Clonmel. Her season of 1783-84 at Drury was doubly marked: she played two Shakspearian characters--Isabella, in "Measure for Measure," to Smith's Duke; and Constance, in "King John," to the King of her own brother, John Kemble. The first was a greater success than the second; but Constance became ultimately one of the most perfect of her portraitures. To see her Isabella, in the "Fatal Marriage," the whole royal family went in quaint state. To her brother's Beverley, she played the wife, in a way which affected the actors as much as it did the audience. In the Countess of Salisbury, one of Mrs. Crawford's great parts, and Sigismunda, she comparatively failed; but she achieved a double triumph in Lady Randolph. It will be remembered how she had desired the retreat of Mrs. Crawford. The old actress had been famous for her performance of Lady Randolph, which she played on her reappearance at Covent Garden in November 1783. Her oldest admirers (some critics excepted) confessed that her powers were shaken. A month afterwards Mrs. Siddons played the same character, for her benefit, to the Young Norval of Brereton, when the old actress succumbed at once, by comparison; but it is doubtful if Mrs. Siddons excelled her, if the comparison be confined to the period when each actress was in youth, strength, and beauty. "Mrs. Siddons," says Campbell, "omitted Mrs. Crawford's scream, in the far-famed question, 'Was he alive?'" In 1801, the year when Mrs. Crawford was laid by the side of her husband, Barry, in Westminster Abbey, Mr. Simons, says Genest, "in a small party at Bath, went through the scene between Old Norval and Lady Randolph,--his imitation of Mrs. Crawford was most perfect, particularly in 'Was he alive?' Mrs. Piozzi, who was present, said to him,--'do not do that before Mrs. Siddons; she would not be pleased.'"