Sends thee devoted to the infernal gods!
After this she acted Jane Shore. “Mrs Siddons,” as one of the critics remarked on this performance, “has the air of never being an actress; she seems unconscious that there is a motley crowd called the pit waiting to applaud her, or that a dozen fiddlers are waiting for her exit.” Her “Forgive me, but forgive me,” when asking pardon of her husband, convulsed the house with sobs. Crabb Robinson, while witnessing this harrowing performance, burst into a peal of laughter, and, upon being removed, was found to be in strong hysterics.
After Jane Shore, she appeared as Calista, Belvidera, and Zara. All were received with the same enthusiasm.
On the 5th June she acted Isabella for the last time that season, having performed in all about eighty nights, and on six of them for the benefit of others; and during that short time she may be said to have completely revolutionised the English stage. Nothing now was applauded but tragedy. The farces which before had won a laugh, were now not listened to. The young actress so completely depressed the spirits of the audience, that the best comic actor seemed unable to raise them. Already she was preparing the way for the stately solemnity of John Kemble and the Revival of Shakespearean Tragedy.
The town went “born mad,” as Horace Walpole said, after her. The papers wrote about her continually, her dress, her movements. Nothing else seemed to have the same interest. Her salary, originally five pounds a week, was raised to twenty pounds before the end of the season, and her first benefit realised eight hundred pounds.
On this latter occasion she addressed a letter to the public:—
“Mrs. Siddons would not have remained so long without expressing the high sense she had of the great honours done her at her late benefit, but that, after repeated trials, she could not find words adequate to her feelings, and she must at present be content with the plain language of a grateful mind; that her heart thanks all her benefactors for the distinguished and, she fears, too partial encouragement which they bestowed on this occasion. She is told that the splendid appearance on that night, and the emoluments arising from it, exceed anything ever recorded on a similar account in the annals of the English stage; but she has not the vanity to imagine that this arose from any superiority over many of her predecessors or some of her contemporaries. She attributes it wholly to that liberality of sentiment which distinguishes the inhabitants of this great metropolis from those of any other in the world. They know her story—they know that for many years, by a strange fatality, she was confined to move in a narrow sphere, in which the rewards attendant on her labours were proportionally small. With a generosity unexampled, they proposed at once to balance the account, and pay off the arrears due, according to the rate, the too partial rate, at which they valued her talents. She knows the danger arising from extraordinary and unmerited favours, and will carefully guard against any approach of pride, too often their attendant. Happy shall she esteem herself, if by the utmost assiduity, and constant exertion of her poor abilities, she shall be able to lessen, though hopeless ever to discharge, the vast debt she owes the public.”
Mrs. Siddons was always too fond of taking the public into her confidence. Everything in this letter can be taken for granted; and it would have been more dignified to have kept silence.
More pleasing and natural are the letters written to her friends. She wrote thus to Dr. Whalley about this time:—
“Just at this moment are you, my dear Sir, sitting down to supper, and ‘every guest’s a friend.’ Oh! that I were with you, but for one half-hour. ‘Oh! God forbid!’ says my dear Mrs. Whalley; ‘for he would talk so loud and so fast, that he would throw himself into a fever, and die of unsatisfied curiosity into the bargain.’ Do I flatter myself, my dear Sir? Oh no! you have both done me the honour to assure me that you love me, and I would not forego the blessed idea for the world ... I did receive all your letters, and thank you for them a thousand times. One line of them is worth all the acclamations of ten thousand shouting theatres.”