But did my sire surpass the rest of men
As thou excellest all of woman kind?
But this was a poor substitute for the breathless thrill, the agony of emotion, with which she shook her audience in the old days.
Unfortunately for us and them, players are not immortal. Health, strength, beauty, voice, fail them, and without these adventitious aids genius is of no avail on the stage. Any loss of reputation to an actress like Mrs. Siddons was a loss to the world; these reappearances, when age and infirmity had weakened her powers, were much to be deplored. Let us, however, turn from this subject to more pleasant ones; and there were so many pleasant incidents and so few mistakes in Mrs. Siddons’s dignified and decorous life, that we can afford to be lenient.
In Fanny Kemble’s Record of a Girlhood, we get glimpses of Aunt Siddons, stately and gentle, surrounded by children and grandchildren.
You know we were to spend Christmas Eve at my Aunt Siddons’s; we had a delightful evening, and I was very happy. My aunt came down from the drawing-room (for we danced in the dining-room on the ground-floor) and sat among us, and you cannot think how nice and pretty it was to see her surrounded by her clan, more than three dozen strong; some of them so handsome, and many with a striking likeness to herself, either in feature or expression. Mrs. Harry and Cecy danced with us, and we enjoyed ourselves very much.
The younger sons of her son George Siddons (who had obtained a Government post at Calcutta), were being educated with their sisters in England, and always spent their holidays with their grandmother, Mrs. Siddons. The youngest of these three school-boys was the father of the beautiful Mrs. Scott Siddons of the present day.
Mrs. Siddons was very fond of children. Campbell tells a story of his once leaving his little boy, aged six, with her, when she was stopping in Paris. When he returned, he found them both in animated conversation. She had been amusing him with all sorts of stories, which she told admirably. The evening before she had been to a fashionable party and offended everyone by the austerity of her manners.
Her letters about her grandchildren are full of simple grandmotherly love, naturally expressed. She wrote from Broadstairs in 1806:—
“My dear Harry, I have very great pleasure in telling you that your dear little ones are quite well. The bathing agrees with them perfectly. They are exceedingly improved in looks and appetite, though their stomachs turn a little, poor dears, at the sight of the machines; but, indeed, upon the whole, the dipping is pretty well got over, and they look so beautiful after it, it would do your heart good to see them. I assure you they are the belles of Broadstairs. Their nurse is very good-humoured to them. She is certainly not a beauty, but they like her as well as if she were a Venus. Never were little souls so easily managed, or so little troublesome.”