A bust of Mrs. Siddons by J. Smith, 57 Upper Norton Street, Marylebone, was exhibited in the Model Room of the Royal Academy in 1813, the year before she retired from the stage. Mr. Edward W. Hennell has an autograph letter of Mrs. Siddons, undated and addressed simply “Sir,” but written, evidently, to this artist and referring to this bust. In it she says, “The time is drawing near which will bring my labors to an end, and I shall then hope to be able to indulge myself in many gratifications of which they have hitherto deprived me, and among which that of visiting your study will stand very forward.”
EDWIN BOOTH
It is not improbable that Smith made a cast of Mrs. Siddons’s face, a common occurrence in those days, although unfortunately no such occurrence is recorded by Mrs. Siddons herself, or by any of her biographers.
The present cast is believed by experts to have been taken from life, and at about the time of her retirement. It shows, in a marked degree, the peculiar thickness of the underlip remembered by persons still living who remember Mrs. Siddons, and noticeable in the portraits of all the Kembles of her generation, particularly in those of the great actress herself. The cast resembles strongly an unfinished sketch of her in the South Kensington Museum, made in her old age by an unknown artist, and it is not unlike the bust she made of herself, now in the Dyce Library in the same institution. Other features of Mrs. Siddons were as prominent as her under-lip; Gainsborough is said to have remarked to her once, in a fit of almost inspired courage, “Damn your nose, madam, there is no end to it!” and she herself is reported to have said that “the jaw-bone of the Kembles is as notorious as the jaw-bone used by Samson.”
MRS. SIDDONS