“We got very safe to Holyhead, and then I felt as if some great event was going to take place, having never been on the sea. I was awed, but not terrified; feeling myself in the hands of a great and powerful God ‘whose mercy is over all His works.’ The sea was particularly rough; we were lifted mountains high, and sank again as low in an instant. Good God! how tremendous, how wonderful! A pleasing terror took hold on me, which it is impossible to describe, and I never felt the majesty of the Divine Creator so fully before. I was dreadfully sick, and so were my poor sister and Mr. Brereton. Mr. Siddons was pretty well; and here, my dear friend, let me give you a little wholesome advice: allways (you see I have forgot to spell) go to bed the instant you go on board, for by lying horizontally, and keeping very quiet, you cheat the sea of half its influence. We arrived in Dublin the 16th June, half-past twelve at night. There is not a tavern or a house of any kind in this capital city of a rising kingdom, as they call themselves, that will take a woman in; and, do you know, I was obliged, after being shut up in the Custom-house officer’s room, to have the things examined, which room was more like a dungeon than anything else—after staying here above an hour and a half, I tell you, I was obliged, sick and weary as I was, to wander about the streets on foot (for the coaches and chairs were all gone off the stands) till almost two o’clock in the morning, raining, too, as if heaven and earth were coming together. A pretty beginning! thought I; but these people are a thousand years behind us in every respect. At length Mr. Brereton, whose father had provided a bed for him on his arrival, ventured to say he would insist on having a bed for us at the house where he was to sleep. Well, we got to this place, and the lady of the house vouchsafed, after many times telling us that she never took in ladies, to say we should sleep there that night.”
The actress’s first appearance was made in Isabella, on the 21st June 1783. The theatre was crowded to suffocation, and guineas and half-guineas were paid for seats in the pit and gallery; but after the first night the enthusiasm seemed to die away, and Mrs. Crawford, at Crow Street Theatre, who had been completely dethroned by Mrs. Siddons in London, now boldly ventured to come forward in opposition to her rival, and, to her own astonishment, as well as that of everyone else, soon commanded larger houses. The critics also soon began their attacks, taking the form of ridicule, a method of warfare very trying to a person of her proud, sensitive nature.
“On Saturday, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and comely person, for the first time, in the Theatre Royal, Smock Alley. The house was crowded with hundreds more than it could hold, with thousands of admiring spectators that went away without a sight. She was nature itself; she was the most exquisite work of art. Several fainted, even before the curtain drew up. The fiddlers in the orchestra blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears ran from the bassoon player’s eyes in such showers that they choked the finger-stops, and, making a spout of the instrument, poured in such a torrent upon the first fiddler’s book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in two flats; but the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of the corks drawn from the smelling-bottles, prevented the mistake being discovered. The briny pond in the pit was three feet deep, and the people that were obliged to stand upon the benches, were in that position up to their ankles in tears. An Act of Parliament against her playing will certainly pass, for she has infected the volunteers, and they sit reading The Fatal Marriage, crying and roaring all the time. May the curses of an insulted nation pursue the gentlemen of the College, the gentlemen of the Bar, and the peers and peeresses that hissed her on the second night. True it is that Mr. Garrick never could make anything of her, and pronounced her below mediocrity; true it is the London audience did not like her; but what of that?”
Her consciousness of the antagonism that existed against her in the press and amongst the public made her stay in the capital by no means either pleasant or successful, and she was glad to start with the party which Daly had got together to go the round of the country. It consisted of the manager and his future wife, Miss Barsanti, the two Kembles, Miss Younge, Digges, Miss Philipps, and Mrs. Melnotte, wife of Pratt Melnotte, of Bath celebrity.
An amusing account of the tour has been left by Bernard the actor, who happened to be in Ireland at the time. The solemn Kembles certainly seem out of place in the rollicking fun, and we can imagine Mrs. Siddons’s stately disgust when a gentleman from the pit called out, “Sally, me jewel, how are you?” or, as occurred several times, when a general dance took place in the gallery as soon as the orchestra began.
Mrs. Siddons does not seem to have had any occasion for changing later the first opinion she formed of the country, for we find her writing confidentially to Mr. Whalley from Cork, on the 29th of August, that she thinks the city of Dublin a sink of filthiness.
“The noisome smells, and the multitudes of shocking and most miserable objects, made me resolve never to stir out but to my business. I like not the people either; they are all ostentation and insincerity, and in their ideas of finery very like the French, but not so cleanly; and they not only speak, but think coarsely. This is in confidence; therefore, your fingers on your lips, I pray. They are tenacious of their country to a degree of folly that is very laughable, and would call me the blackest of ingrates were they to know my sentiments of them. I have got a thousand pounds among them this summer. I always acknowledge myself obliged to them, but I cannot love them. I know but one among them that can in any degree atone for the barbarism of the rest, who thinks there are other means of expressing esteem besides forcing people to eat and to drink, the doing which to a most offensive degree they call Irish hospitality. I long to be at home, sitting quietly in the little snug parlour, where I had last the pleasure, or rather the pain, of seeing you that night. For the first time in my life I wished not to see you. I dreaded it, and with reason. I knew (which was the case) I should not recover that cruel farewell for several days.
“Oh! my dear friend, do the pleasures of life compensate for the pangs? I think not. Some people place the whole happiness of life in the pleasures of imagination, in building castles; for my part, I am not one that builds very magnificent ones. Nay; I don’t build any castles, but cottages without end. May the great Disposer of all events but permit me to spend the evening of my toilsome, bustling day in a cottage, where I may sometimes have the converse and society which will make me more worthy those imperishable habitations which are prepared for the spirits of just men made perfect! Yes, let me take up my rest in this world near my beloved Langford. You know this has been my castle any time these four years. And I am making a little snug party. Mr. Nott and my dear sister I have secured, and make no doubt of gaining a few others. Is not this a delightful scheme?
“I have played for one charity since I have been here (I am at Cork, I should tell you), and am to play for another to-morrow—your favourite Zara, in the Mourning Bride. I am extremely happy that you like your little companion so well [alluding to a miniature of herself she had sent him]. I have sat to a young man in this place, who has made a small full-length of me in Isabella, upon the first entrance of Biron. You will think this an arduous undertaking, but he has succeeded to admiration. I think it more like me than any I have ever yet seen. I am sure you would have been delighted with it. I never was so well in my life as I have been in Ireland; but, God be praised, I shall set out for dear England next Tuesday.
“This letter has been begun this month, and finished by a line or two at a time, so you’ll find it a fine scrawl, and I am still so mere a matter-of-fact body as to despair of giving you the least entertainment. I can boast no other claim to the honour and happiness of your correspondence than a very sincere affection for you both, joined with the most perfect esteem for your most amiable qualities and great talent. Say all that’s kind for me to my dear Mrs. W⸺, and believe me, ever your most affectionate