“He (Garrick) promised Mr. Siddons to procure me a good engagement with the new managers, and desired him to give himself no trouble about the matter, but to put my cause entirely into his hands. He let me down, however, after all these protestations, in the most humiliating manner, and, instead of doing me common justice with those gentlemen, rather depreciated my talents. This Mr. Sheridan afterwards told me; and said that when Mrs. Abington heard of my impending dismissal, she told them they were all acting like fools. When the London season was over, I made an engagement at Birmingham for the ensuing summer, little doubting of my return to Drury Lane for the next winter; but, whilst I was fulfilling my engagement at Birmingham, to my utter dismay and astonishment, I received an official letter from the prompter of Drury Lane, acquainting me that my services would be no longer required. It was a stunning and cruel blow, overwhelming all my ambitious hopes, and involving peril even to the subsistence of my helpless babes. It was very near destroying me. My blighted prospects, indeed, induced a state of mind that preyed upon my health, and for a year and a half I was supposed to be hastening to a decline. For the sake of my poor children, however, I roused myself to shake off this despondency, and my endeavours were blest with success, in spite of the degradation I had suffered in being banished from Drury Lane as a worthless candidate for fame and fortune.”
Siddons wrote piteously to Garrick on the 9th of February 1776, soliciting his “friendship” and “endeavour” for their continuance in Drury Lane. “I account we have been doubly unfortunate at our onset in the theatre, first that particular circumstances prevented us from joining it at a proper time, and thereby rendered it impossible for us to be mingled in the business of the season, where our utility might have been more observed; second, that we are going to be deprived of you as manager, and left to those who, perhaps, may not have an opportunity this winter of observing us at all: these considerations, Sir, have occasioned this address, with hopes you will lay them before Mr. Lacy and those gentlemen your successors; and as there has been no agreement with regard to salary between you and us, it may now be necessary to propose that article, thereby to acquaint them with what we shall expect, which (as we are so young in the theatre) is no more than what we can decently subsist on and appear with some credit to the profession. That is, for Mrs. Siddons three pounds a week, for myself two; this, I flatter myself, we shall both be found worthy of for the first year; after that (as it may be presumed we shall be more experienced in our business) shall wish to rise as our merits may demand. I am, Sir, with many apologies for this freedom, your most obedient and very humble servant, Wm. Siddons.”
It shows how disastrous the effect of her acting must have been that, in spite of the smallness of their demands, Lacy, Sheridan & Co. refused to entertain their proposal.
It is a curious fact, if, as she says, the treatment she received at Garrick’s hands was unjust, that at this juncture the managers of the rival theatre of Covent Garden, who had already been in treaty with her, and thought themselves unhandsomely dealt with when Garrick secured her, did not come forward now. It is clear that the anxiety of the Covent Garden managers for her assistance was extinguished by her performance; those talents which they were ready before her appearance to contest with Garrick, they subsequently resigned without an effort to the obscurity of a strolling company. We have a curious corollary to her statement, “that Mrs. Abington told them they were all acting like fools,” in the lately published Memoirs of Crabbe Robinson, in which he relates a conversation he held in 1811 with Mrs. Abington on the subject of Mrs. Siddons. She was by no means warm, he says, in her praise. She objected to the elaborate emphasis given to very insignificant words. “That was brought in by them,” she added, with truth, alluding to the weakness of the family. Perhaps the fair Abington’s praise at first was as conclusive a sign of failure as Sheridan’s dismissal.
Good-natured Pivey Clive was more honest in saying nothing at the time; but on going with Mrs. Garrick to see her later, when she was in the heyday of her success, she pronounced the young actress, in her own characteristic fashion, to be “all truth and daylight.”
We never hear Garrick’s name mentioned again with hers, except in a note in connection with two folio Shakespeares of 1623. “In 1776,” Payne Collier says, “Garrick had presented the volume (one of the folio copies with the autographs of David Garrick and Sarah Siddons) to Mrs. Siddons as a testimony of her merits, and of his obligation.” So far Payne Collier. Another writer, commenting on this note, demonstrates that it is not likely that Garrick presented so great a treasure as the folio Shakespeare of 1623 to Mrs. Siddons, especially as the words “a testimony of her merits and his obligation” was an addition of Payne Collier. He then relates the circumstances of her first appearance. Garrick, he says, amongst other things, noticed some awkward action of her arms, and said “if she waved them about in that fashion she would knock off his wig,” upon which she retorted to the person who told her, “He was only afraid I should overshadow his nose.” A mutual feeling not likely to lead to such a gift. It would be interesting, therefore, to know through what hands the volume passed from Garrick to Mrs. Siddons, and from Mrs. Siddons to Lilly the bookseller. With the great actor’s wife she was afterwards on terms of friendship; and when Mrs. Garrick died, she left her in her will a pair of gloves which were Shakespeare’s, “and were presented to my late dear husband by one of the family during the Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon.” And so “Davey” vanishes from her life.
CHAPTER IV.
WORK.
The rebuff she had sustained at Drury Lane called out all that was finest in Mrs. Siddons’ nature. The blow had been “stunning and cruel,” as she says; but the resolute valiant nature she had inherited from her mother soon reasserted itself. In spite of delicate health, which Wilkinson, who acted with her in Evander, feared “might disable her from sustaining the fatigues of duty,” we find her moving from place to place, unintermitting in study, attaining a step higher each new representation she essayed, persistently raising her audience to her level, not descending to theirs.
She no longer led the “vagabond” life of her early strolling days, but still one of constant anxiety and unrest. The young actress returned to the provinces with the prestige of having acted with the great Garrick, and of having even excited the jealousy of “Roscius” by her dramatic power—a report industriously circulated by her friends and managers, and, no doubt, confirmed by the actress herself. So unconsciously does self-interest colour our opinions.