And so closes this wonderful year in the great actress’s life—the one to which she always looked back as the climax of her happiness and good fortune.
CHAPTER VI.
DUBLIN AND EDINBURGH.
Irishmen have a natural theatrical instinct, and Dublin, at the time of which we write, was to a certain degree valued as a censor in dramatic affairs as highly as London. A Dublin audience often ventured to dissent from the judgments of the metropolis, and, as in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, who, Campbell quaintly tells us, “electrified the Irish with disappointment,” to entirely reverse them. Most of the best Drury Lane players had begun their career at the Smock Alley theatre, and many of them had Irish blood in their veins. The theatre was the finest in the kingdom next to Drury Lane, boasting the innovation of a drop scene, representing the Houses of Parliament, instead of the conventional green curtain.
The same causes which placed the provincial towns of England in an important position, so far as social and dramatic affairs were concerned, operated still more effectually in the case of Dublin. To cross to London in those days was as long and tedious a journey as to go to New York in ours; and none even of the nobility thought of doing so every year. The vice-regal court was, therefore, really a court, surrounded by a certain amount of brilliancy and splendour. Ever since the days of Peg Woffington and the Miss Gunnings, Irish beauties had dared to set the fashion; and we read in a letter written from Dublin, by a leader of fashion of the day, that it is of no use English women coming over unless they are prepared to “make their waists of the circumference of two oranges, no more”; their “heads a foot high, exclusive of feathers, and stretching to a pent-house of most horrible projection behind, the breadth from wing to wing considerably broader than your shoulders; and as many different things in your cap as in Noah’s ark.... Verily,” the lady ends, “I never did see such monsters as the heads now in vogue; I am a monster, too, but a moderate one.”
Round the small court fluttered young equerries who wrote plays, and were devoted to the drama. Actors and actresses themselves, if at all within the pale of respectability, were admitted to the vice-regal circle. Mrs. Inchbald was intimate with many of the fashionable and literary ladies. Daly, the manager of the theatre, was a regular habitué of the “Castle”; and John Kemble, who had arrived in Ireland some time before his sister, had been introduced by the equerry Jephson to the “set,” including Tighe, Courtenay, and others.
All this society was thrown into a ferment of excitement when it was announced that the beautiful young actress, who had turned all heads in London, was coming to Dublin. Kemble was interviewed and pestered with inquiries on the subject. Indeed, his prestige for the time was vastly increased by his relationship. At a dinner at the Castle, Lord Inchiquin gave as a toast, “The matchless Mrs. Siddons,” and sent her brother a ring containing her miniature set in diamonds.
Daly had gone over himself to engage her; and it was said she had refused all provincial offers in England for the sake of winning the hearts of the Irish critics. All seemed propitious, and the way prepared for the coming of the conquering heroine. Events, however, did not turn out as expected. There, where the vivacious, impudent, good-natured Peg Woffington, with her “bad” voice and swaggering way, became a popular idol, the queenly Siddons, with her imperious, tragic manner, extorted praise for her acting, no doubt, but never won their hearts. In spite of the Irish blood in her veins, she had no fellow-feeling for the people; and an antagonism sprang up between her and her Dublin audience from the first. She disliked the dirt, ostentation, insincerity, and frivolity of Irishmen, and refused to acknowledge their kind-heartedness and genuine artistic appreciation.
By her letters we can see the impression the country made on her. She started in the beginning of July, accompanied by a small party, which consisted of Brereton, her husband, and her sister. On the 14th she writes to her friend Whalley:—
“I thank you a thousand and a thousand times for your letter; but you don’t mention having heard from me since you left England. We rejoice most sincerely that you are arrived without any material accident, without any dangerous ones I mean, for, to be sure, some of them were very materially entertaining. Oh! how I laugh whenever the drowsy adventure comes across my imagination, for ‘more was meant than met the ear.’ I am sure I would have given the world to have seen my dear Mrs. Whalley upon the little old tub. How happy you are in your descriptions! So she was very well; then very jocular she must be. I think her conversation, thus enthroned and thus surrounded, must have been the highest treat in all the world. Some parts of your tour must have been enchanting. How good it was of you to wish me a partaker of your pastoral dinner! Be assured, my dear, dear friends, no one can thank you more sincerely, or be more sensible of the honour of your regard, though many may deserve it better. What a comfortable thing to meet with such agreeable people! But society and converse like yours and dear Mrs. Whalley’s must very soon make savages agreeable. How did poor little Paphy bear it? Did she remonstrate in her usual melting tones? I am sure she was very glad to be at rest, which does not happen in a carriage, I remember, for any length of time. I can conceive nothing so provoking or ridiculous as the Frenchman’s politeness, and poor Vincent’s perplexity. You will have heard, long ere this reaches you, that our sweet D⸺ is safely delivered of a very fine girl, which, I know, will give you no small pleasure. Now for myself. Our journey was delightful; the roads through Wales present you with mountains unsurmountable, the grandest and most beautiful prospects to be conceived; but I want your pen to describe them.