The great actress would boast with more pride of the effect she produced on a little girl during the performance of Jane Shore, than of her greatest triumphs. In the last scenes of the play, when the unfortunate heroine, destitute and starving, exclaims in an agony of suffering, “I have not tasted bread for three days,” a little voice was heard, broken by sobs, exclaiming, “Madam, madam! do take my orange, if you please,” and the audience and the actress beheld, in one of the stage boxes, a little girl holding her out an orange.
A lady, now alive, recalls to mind, when she was very young, being taken to pay a visit to “the great Mrs. Siddons.” She long after remembered those wonderful eyes, and particularly the long silky eye-lashes, which she noticed were of extraordinary length, and curled upwards in a beautiful curve. On being told that the child was obliged to go away to the country, and would have no opportunity of hearing her on the stage, she kindly said she would recite for her, and did so there and then.
One of her grandchildren has described the interest of her visits to her. Frequently her grandmother would read to them, giving them the choice of the play. One evening in particular she recalled the reading of Othello. “It was a stormy night, and the thunder was heard occasionally, and she so grand and impressive; her look! her voice, her magnificent eyes, still clear and brilliant. It was real reading, not declamation, and yet the effect,” she says, “was beyond anything I could conceive of the finest acting.” This was only the winter before her death.
We find her now suffering all the fluctuations in spirits old age is subject to, sometimes complaining of feebleness and suffering, at others returning to all the girlish playfulness of her younger days. On July 12th, 1819, she writes to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
“Well, my dear friend, though I am not of rank and condition to be myself at the Prince’s ball, my fine clothes, at any rate, will have that honour. Lady B⸺ has borrowed my Lady Macbeth’s finest banquet dress, and I wish her ladyship joy in wearing it, for I found the weight of it almost too much for endurance for half an hour. How will she be able to carry it for such a length of time? But young and old are expected to appear, upon that ‘high solemnity’ in splendid and fanciful apparel, and many of these beauties will appear in my stage finery. Lady C⸺ at first intended to present herself (as she said very drolly) as a vestal virgin, but has now decided upon the dress of a fair Circassian. I should like to see this gorgeous assembly, and I have some thoughts of walking in in the last dress of Lady Macbeth, and swear I came there in my sleep. But enough of this nonsense.”
Her brother John, sharer of most of her trials and triumphs, settled at Lausanne towards the end of his life. The loss of his society was a sad deprivation, and in 1821 she paid him a visit. Her daughter Cecilia, in a letter home, described the delights of the villa the Kembles lived in, and the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
Mrs. Siddons meditated an expedition to Chamounix but for some reason it was given up, and they went to Berne; the weather was wet, however, and they were obliged to return sooner than they expected. They ate chamois, crossed a lake, mounted a glacier with two men, cutting steps in the ice with a hatchet, and did all that was required of them as travellers. “My mother bore all the fatigues much more wonderfully than any of us,” the letter ends.
In spite of her wonderful energy, old age was creeping on her apace. Erysipelas, which was ultimately fatal, frequently attacked her with a burning soreness in her mouth, or with headaches that were equally painful. She had to submit to that worst penalty of advancing years, the death of friends; those of Mrs. Damer and of Mrs. Piozzi were a great loss. In February 1823, John Kemble died at Lausanne. On the 9th he dined out, and it was remarked that he was in very good spirits; the next evening a few friends dropped in for a rubber of whist. The following Sunday he was out in his garden; but while he was sitting reading the paper, it fell from his hands. His wife rushed to him; he only faltered a few words, begging her not to be alarmed. The doctor was sent for, but one stroke after another seized him, and he died on the 20th. This was a sad blow to Mrs. Siddons.
In her seventy-third year she wrote to Mrs. Fitzhugh from Cobham Hall, the seat of Lord Darnley:—
“I have brought myself to see whether change of scene, and the cordial kindness of my noble host and hostess, will not at least do something to divert my torment. But real evils will not give way to such applications, gratifying though they may be. I have had the honour, however, of conversing with Prince Leopold; he is a very agreeable and sensible converser, and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent seems to justify all the opinions of her amiability. I have begun to recover the loss of my dear little girls, George’s daughters. How I long to hear they are safe in the arms of their anxious parents. In this magnificent place, I assure you, my seventy-second birthday was celebrated with the most gratifying and flattering cordiality. We had music and Shakespeare, which Lord Darnley has at his finger’s ends. I should have enjoyed the party more if it had not been so large; but twenty-three people at dinner is rather too much of a good thing.... Talking of the arts, I cannot help thinking with sorrow of the statue of my poor brother. It is an absolute libel on his noble person and air. I should like to pound it into dust, and scatter it to the winds.