“I have at last, my friend, attained the ten thousand pounds which I set my heart upon, and am now perfectly at ease with respect to fortune. I thank God who has enabled me to procure to myself so comfortable an income. I am sure my dear Mrs. Whalley and you will be pleased to hear this from myself. What a thing a balloon would be! but, the deuce take them, I do not find that they are likely to be brought to any good. Good heaven! what delight it would be to see you for a few days only! I have a nice house, and I could contrive to make up a bed. I know you and my dear Mrs. Whalley would accept my sincere endeavours to accommodate you; but don’t let me be taken by surprise, my dear friend, for were I to see you first at the theatre, I can’t answer for what might be the consequence.
“I stand some knocks with tolerable firmness, I suppose from habit; but those of joy being so infinitely less frequent, I conceive must be more difficultly sustained.
“You will find I have been a niggard of my praise, when you see your Fanny. Oh! my beloved friend, you could not speak to one who understands those anxieties you mention better than I do. Surely it is needless to say no one more ardently prays that God Almighty, in His mercy, will avert the calamity; and surely, surely there is everything to hope for from such dispositions, improved by such an education. My family is well, God be praised! My two sisters are married and happy. Mrs. Twiss will present us with a new relation towards February. At Christmas I bring my dear girls from Miss Eames, or rather she brings them to me. Eliza is the most entertaining creature in the world; Sally is vastly clever; Maria and George are beautiful; and Harry, a boy with very good parts, but not disposed to learning.”
In spite of her statement that once she had made ten thousand pounds she would rest contented, we find her for the two next years working without intermission, going from York to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to Liverpool. In 1788 Kemble succeeded King as manager of Drury Lane, and his sister returned to assist, first of all in his spectacular revival of Macbeth, in which, among other innovations, he brought in the black, grey, and white spirits, as bands of little boys. One of these imps was insubordinate, and was sent away in disgrace; his name was “Edmund Kean.”
They then acted Henry VIII. together, Kemble contenting himself with “doubling” the characters of Cromwell and Griffith, Bensley having already possession of the part of Wolsey. The representation was a success in every way, and Mrs. Siddons’s Queen Katherine was henceforth ranked as equal to her Lady Macbeth.
On the 7th February following she played for the first time Volumnia to her brother’s Coriolanus. An eye-witness tells us:—
“I remember her coming down the stage in the triumphal entry of her son Coriolanus, when her dumb show drew plaudits that shook the building. She came alone, marching and beating time to the music; rolling (if that be not too strong a term to describe her motion) from side to side, swelling with the triumph of her son. Such was the intoxication of joy which flashed from her eye, and lit up her whole face, that the effect was irresistible. She seemed to me to reap all the glory of that procession to herself. I could not take my eye from her. Coriolanus, banner, and pageant, all went for nothing to me, after she had walked to her place.”
Many are the testimonies of actors and actresses that show her extraordinary personal power. Young relates that he was once acting Beverley with her at Edinburgh. They had reached the fifth act, when Beverley had swallowed the poison, and Bates comes in, and says to the dying man, “Jarvis found you quarrelling with Jewson in the streets last night.” Mrs. Beverley says, “No, I am sure he did not!” to which Jarvis replies, “Or if I did?” meaning, it may be supposed, to add, “The fault was not with my master.” But the moment he utters the words “Or if I did?” Mrs. Beverley exclaims, “’Tis false, old man! They had no quarrel—there was no cause for quarrel!” In uttering this, Mrs. Siddons caught hold of Jarvis, and gave the exclamation with such piercing grief, that Young said his throat swelled and his utterance was choked. He stood unable to repeat the words which, as Beverley, he ought to have immediately delivered. The prompter repeated the speech several times, till Mrs. Siddons, coming up to her fellow-actor, put the tips of her fingers on his shoulders, and said in a low voice, “Mr. Young, recollect yourself.”
Macready relates an equally remarkable instance of her power. In the last act of Rowe’s Tamerlane, when, by the order of the tyrant Moneses, Aspasia’s lover is strangled before her face, she worked herself up to such a pitch of agony that, as she sank a lifeless heap before the murderer, the audience remained for several moments awe-struck, then clamoured for the curtain to fall, believing that she was really dead; and only the earnest assurances of the manager to the contrary could satisfy them. Holman and the elder Macready were among the spectators, and looked aghast at one another. “Macready, do I look as pale as you?” inquired the former.
On another occasion, when performing Henry VIII. with a raw “supernumerary” who was playing Surveyor, when she warned him against giving false testimony against his master, her look was so terrific that the unfortunate youth came off perspiring with terror, and swearing that nothing would induce him to meet that woman’s eyes again.