We cannot resist giving here a letter which Mrs. Siddons received many years after her first appearance on the stage, when one might have thought her age and reputation a sufficient protection against such addresses:—
Loveliest of women! In Belvidera, Isabella, Juliet, and Calista, I have admired you until my fancy threatened to burst, and the strings of my imagination were ready to crack to pieces; but, as Mrs. Siddons, I love you to madness, and until my heart and soul are overwhelmed with fondness and desire. Say not that time has placed any difference in years between you and me. The youths of her day saw no wrinkles upon the brow of Ninon de l’Enclos. It is for vulgar souls alone to grow old; but you shall flourish in eternal youth, amidst the war of elements, and the crash of worlds.
May 2nd, Barley Mow, Salisbury Square.
So pertinacious became the persecutions of this young Irishman, for he was an Irishman, that she was obliged to seek the protection of the law. His bursting imagination was kept in check for some little time by the sobering effects of a term of imprisonment.
Sometimes, also, her would-be adorers boasted of favours never received.
“If you should meet a Mr. Seton,” she wrote to Dr. Whalley, “who lived in Leicester Square, you must not be surprised to hear him talk of being very well with my sister and myself; for, since I have been here, I have heard the old fright has been giving it out in town. You will find him rather an unlikely person to be so great a favourite with women.”
Amongst fashionable ladies she counted many and constant friends. The doors of Mrs. Montagu’s house (centre of intellect and fashion) were always open to her; and we hear of her there on one occasion when all the “Blues” swarmed round their “Queen Bee,” and she wore her celebrated dress embroidered with the “ruins of Palmyra.”
Mrs. Damer (Anne Conway), daughter of General Conway, the celebrated sculptress and woman of fashion, was also one of her most intimate friends, and later in life the actress spent many hours in her studio when bitten herself with the love of modelling. Campbell says that Mrs. Siddons’s love of modelling in clay, began at Birmingham; and he tells a story of her going into a shop there, seeing a bust of herself, which the shopman, not knowing who she was, told her was the likeness of the greatest actress in the world. Mrs. Siddons bought it, and, thinking she could make a better replica of her own features, set to work and made modelling a favourite pursuit. Whether the impetus was thus given we hardly know, but it was the fashion of the time. Mrs. Damer, who was declared by her admirers “to be as great a sculptor as Mr. Nollekens,” and many other dainty fine ladies, put on mob caps and canvas aprons, wielding mallet and chisel, and kneading wax and clay with their small white hands. Mrs. Siddons was often the guest of Mrs. Damer at Strawberry Hill.
In her circle of women friends, we must not forget, either, the beautiful, fascinating, stuttering Mrs. Inchbald, the dear muse of her and her brother John. It is said that, coming off the stage one evening, she was about to sit down by Mrs. Siddons in the green-room, when, suddenly looking at her magnificent neighbour, she said, “No, I won’t s-s-s-sit by you; you’re t-t-t-too handsome!” in which respect she certainly need have feared no competition, and less with Mrs. Siddons than anyone, their style of beauty being so absolutely dissimilar.
Miss Seward was one of the adorers of her circle, but, in spite of the pages of rhapsodies on the subject “of the most glorious of her sex,” written to “her dear Lichfieldians” and the odes poured out to “Isabella” and “Euphrasia,” it is a significant fact that we do not find one letter personally to Mrs. Siddons, nor one from Mrs. Siddons addressed to her. Practical and sincere herself, the great actress disliked “gush” of all sorts. Miss Seward wrote, “My dear friends, I arrived here at five. Think of my mortification! Mrs. Siddons in Belvidera to-night, as is supposed, for the last time before she lies in. I asked Mrs. Barrow if it would be impossible to get into the pit. “O heaven!” said she, “impossible in any part of the house!” Mrs. B⸺ is, I find, in the petit souper circle; so the dear plays oratorios, and will be a little too much for my wishes, out of question. Adieu! Adieu!”