Afterwards, when by these ebullitions of real feeling she had proved her audience’s appreciation, she could afford to tell stories of their stolidity when she first appeared amongst them. The second night, disheartened at the cold reception of her most thrilling passages, after one desperate effort she paused for a reply. It came at last, when the silence was broken by a single voice exclaiming, “That’s no bad!” a tribute which was the signal for unbounded applause. One venerable old gentleman, who was taken by his daughter to see the great actress in Venice Preserved, sat with perfect composure through the first act and into the second, when he asked his daughter, “Which was the woman Siddons?” As Belvidera is the only female part in the play, she had no difficulty in answering. Nothing more occurred till the catastrophe; he then inquired, “Is this a comedy or a tragedy?” “Why, bless you, father, a tragedy.” “So I thought, for I am beginning to feel a commotion.” This instance was typical of the whole of the audience—and once they began to “feel a commotion,” there was no longer any doubt about their expression of it. The passion, indeed, for hysterics and fainting at her performances ran into a fashionable mania. A distinguished surgeon, familiarly called “Sandy Wood,” who, with his shrewd common-sense, had a way of seeing through the follies of his fashionable patients, was called from his seat in the pit, where he was to be found every evening Mrs. Siddons acted, to attend upon the hysterics of one of the excitable ladies who were tumbling around him. On his way through the crowd a friend said to him, alluding to Mrs. Siddons, “This is glorious acting, Sandy.” Looking round at the fainting and screaming ladies in the boxes, Wood answered, “Yes, and a d⸺d deal o’t, too.” Some verses in the Scot’s Magazine give a picture of the scene, the pit being described as “all porter and pathos, all whisky and whining,” while—
“From all sides of the house, hark! the cry how it swells,
While the boxes are torn with most heart-piercing yells!”
The enthusiasm to see her was so great, that one day there were more than 2,500 applications for about 600 seats. The oppression and heat was so great in the crowded and ill-ventilated theatre, that an epidemic that attacked the town was humorously attributed to this cause, and was called “the Siddons fever.” All that was most cultured and intellectual in Edinburgh came to do her homage—Blair, Hume, Beattie, Mackenzie, Home, all attended her performances. She made by her engagement, the share of the house, benefit, and subscription, more than one thousand pounds. And this success was not only among the educated classes, the pit and gallery paid their tribute besides. Campbell tells us how a poor servant-girl with a basket of greens on her arm, one day stopped near her in the High Street, and hearing her speak, said, “Ah, weel do I ken that sweet voice, that made me greet sae sair the streen.”
Before she left she was presented with a silver tea-urn, as a mark of “esteem” for superior genius and unrivalled talents. She refers to this visit later in her grandiloquent style. “How shall I express my gratitude for the honours and kindness of my northern friends? for, should I attempt it, I should be thought the very queen of egotists. But never can I forget the private no less than public marks of their gratifying suffrages.”
CHAPTER VII.
CLOUDS.
On the 15th June she tore herself away from all these “private” and “public marks of gratifying suffrages,” and again paid a visit to Dublin, which at the beginning was more successful than her former one, but towards the end was clouded with untoward circumstances, which militated against her for the whole of her professional career.
This time she became the guest of her former friend Miss Boyle, now become Mrs. O’Neil of Shane’s Castle. The Lord-Lieutenant welcomed her as if she were some “great lady of rank,” and she tells us how she was received “by all the first families with the most flattering hospitality, and the days I passed with them will be ever remembered among the most pleasurable of my life.” She paid a visit to Shane’s Castle. “I have not words to describe the beauty and splendour of this enchanting place, which, I am sorry to say, has since been levelled to the earth by a tremendous fire. Here were often assembled all the talent, and rank, and beauty of Ireland. Among the persons of the Leinster family whom I met here was poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the most amiable, honourable, though misguided youth I ever knew.
“The luxury of this establishment almost inspired the recollections of an Arabian Night’s entertainment. Six or eight carriages, with a numerous throng of lords and ladies on horseback, began the day by making excursions around this terrestrial paradise, returning home just in time to dress for dinner. The table was served with a profusion and elegance to which I have never seen anything comparable. The sideboards were decorated with adequate magnificence, on which appeared several immense silver flagons containing claret. A fine band of musicians played during the whole of the repast. They were stationed in the corridors, which led into a fine conservatory, where we plucked our dessert from numerous trees of the most exquisite fruits. The foot of the conservatory was washed by the waves of a superb lake, from which the cool and pleasant wind came, to murmur in concert with the harmony from the corridor. The graces of the presiding genius, the lovely mistress of the mansion, seemed to blend with the whole scene.”