There is something almost heroic, therefore, in the appearance of the young actress on the boards of Drury Lane at this particular juncture. Alone and unaided, against enormous odds, she saved the famous theatre, endeared to every lover of dramatic art, from artistic and financial ruin. She had hitherto proved herself to have indomitable industry and energy, to have all the qualities of a hard-working, painstaking artist; now she was suddenly to flash forth in all the splendour of her genius and power. And yet how simple and womanly she remained. There was no undue reliance on her own gifts, in spite of the indiscriminate praise that had been heaped on her at Bath by too zealous friends. She turned a deaf ear to Miss Seward—“all asterisks and exclamations,” and to Dr. Whalley—“all sighs and admiration”; but listened to the wise suggestions of Mr. Linley and of old Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, himself a retired actor with full knowledge of the stage and its requirements. She and they were afraid her voice was not equal to filling a large London theatre. “But we soon had reason to think,” she tells us, “that the bad construction of the Bath theatre, and not the weakness of my voice was the cause of our mutual fears.”
Isabella, in Southerne’s pathetic play of The Fatal Marriage, was the part Sheridan recommended her to choose for her first appearance, and the selection showed his appreciative knowledge both of her powers and of the audience she was to act to; the combined tenderness, grief and indignation showing the variety and range of expression of which she was capable. Hamilton painted a picture of her in this part, dressed in deep black, holding her boy by the hand, and appealing for help to her father-in-law, that even now brings the tears to one’s eyes as one looks at it. Her son Henry, then eight years old, acted with her. It is said that, observing his mother at rehearsal in the agonies of the dying scene, he took the fiction for reality, and burst into a flood of tears. She herself for the fortnight before her appearance suffered from nervous agitation more than can be imagined. The whole account of her mental state is best told in her own words.
“No wonder I was nervous before the memorable day on which hung my own fate and that of my little family. I had quitted Bath, where all my efforts had been successful, and I feared lest a second failure in London might influence the public mind greatly to my prejudice, in the event of my return from Drury Lane, disgraced as I formerly had been. In due time I was summoned to the rehearsal of Isabella. Who can imagine my terror? I feared to utter a sound above an audible whisper; but by degrees enthusiasm cheered me into a forgetfulness of my fears, and I unconsciously threw out my voice, which failed not to be heard in the remotest part of the house by a friend who kindly undertook to ascertain the happy circumstance.
“The countenances, no less than tears and flattering encouragements of my companions, emboldened me more and more, and the second rehearsal was even more affecting than the first. Mr. King, who was then manager, was loud in his applause. This second rehearsal took place on the 8th October 1782, and on the evening of that day I was seized with a nervous hoarseness, which made me extremely wretched; for I dreaded being obliged to defer my appearance on the 10th, longing, as I most earnestly did, at least to know the worst. I went to bed, therefore, in a state of dreadful suspense. Awaking the next morning, however, though out of restless, unrefreshing sleep, I found, upon speaking to my husband, that my voice was very much clearer. This, of course, was a great comfort to me; and, moreover, the sun, which had been completely obscured for many days, shone brightly through my curtains. I hailed it, though tearfully, yet thankfully, as a happy omen; and even now I am not ashamed of this (as it may, perhaps, be called) childish superstition. On the morning of the 10th my voice was, most happily, perfectly restored; and again ‘the blessed sun shone brightly on me.’ On this eventful day my father arrived to comfort me, and to be a witness of my trial. He accompanied me to my dressing-room at the theatre. There he left me; and I, in one of what I call my desperate tranquillities, which usually impress me under terrific circumstances, there completed my dress, to the astonishment of my attendants, without uttering one word, though often sighing most profoundly.”
The young actress had been puffed industriously before by Sheridan in the play-bills, and he had, no doubt, circulated in his dexterous way that the cause of her previous failure had been Garrick’s jealousy, as, indeed, we know he told the actress herself.
There was a certain amount of expectancy and discussion. The house was full of all that was most brilliant, intellectual, and “tonish” in the London of that day. They had all come with powdered heads, gold-laced coats, and diamond-encircled throats to see a pretty woman act an affecting play; but they were hardly prepared for the passion and pathos that for the time being shook them out of their artificial lace handkerchief grief and bowed the powdered heads with genuine emotion. She was well supported—Smith, Palmer, Farren, Packer, and Mrs. Love acting with her, to say nothing of the veteran Roger Kemble, her father, who was, she tells us, little less agitated than herself. Her husband did not even venture to appear behind or before the scenes, his agitation was so great.
“At length I was called to my fiery trial. The awful consciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined, as it were, with human intellect from top to bottom and all around, may, perhaps, be imagined, but can never be described, and can never be forgotten.”
If that night were never to pass from the memory of Mrs. Siddons, neither would it ever pass from the memory of those who were present, nor ever be erased from the annals of the English stage, of which that beautiful and pathetic face and form was to be for many years the chief pride.
The story of Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage, is simple in construction, the interest centring in one figure, that of the heroine. Biron, son of a proud and worldly-minded man, marries a girl beneath him in station, contrary to his father’s wish. A son is born, but Biron has hardly had time to rejoice over his birth before he is called away to the war, and, after some months, is reported as killed in battle. The wife appears with the child in the first scene, appealing in vain, for pity’s sake, to her father-in-law to give her something to support her and the infant. As the bailiff enters to arrest her for debt, Villeroy (whose attentions she had repelled, grieving as she was for her husband) comes forward, frees her from the importunities of her creditors, and induces her, for her child’s sake, to marry him. Hardly is she Villeroy’s wife before Biron returns. In despair, she kills herself.
There were moments, sentences that became traditional after this first night, as when, in reply to the question put to her on the arrival of the creditors as to what she would do, she answered, “Do! Nothing!” the very tone of the words told all her story. Miss Gordon fainted away on hearing the cry “Biron! Biron!” while we know Madame de Staël’s account in Corinne of the hysterical laugh when Isabella kills herself at the end.