Had Mrs. Siddons lived in our day, every shop-window would have been crowded with photographs of her classically beautiful face, in every pose and every costume. Mercifully she lived in the days of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and is, therefore, the original of two of the most beautiful female portraits ever painted. Sir Joshua is said to have borrowed his conception from a figure designed by Michael Angelo on the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. She is seated in a chair of state, with two figures behind holding the dagger and the bowl. The head is thrown back in an attitude of dramatic inspiration, the right hand thrown over an arm of the seat, the left raised, pointing upwards. A tiara, necklace, and splendid folds of drapery enhance the stateliness of the composition. It is, undoubtedly, the great painter’s masterpiece. “The picture,” Northcote says, “kept him in a fever.” The unfavourable reception his pictures of the year before had met with made him resolved to show the critics that he was not past his prime, while the grandeur and magnificence of the sitter stimulated him to the exertion of all his genius.
Mrs. Siddons was fond, in later years, of describing her sittings. “Ascend your undisputed throne,” said the painter, leading her to the platform. “Bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse.” And then, when it was ended, the great painter insisted on inscribing his name on her robe, saying that he could not lose the honour of going down to posterity on the hem of her garment. We, who only know of her greatness from hearsay, can form some idea of what she must have been from this magnificent conception.
Very nearly as noble and beautiful is the portrait by Gainsborough. The delicacy of a refined English complexion has never been so beautifully painted, while the tone and colour is as exquisite as anything Gainsborough ever did. The light transparent blue, cool yellow, crimson, brown, and black, forms an enchanting setting for the lovely head, which stands out clear and delicate. It is said, that while Gainsborough was painting her, after working in an absorbed silence for some time, he suddenly exclaimed, “Damn it, Madam, there is no end to your nose!” And, indeed, it does stand out a little sharply. But the great feature of the Kembles was the jaw-bone. The actress herself exclaimed, laughing, “The Kemble jaw-bone! Why, it is as notorious as Samson’s!” Mrs. Jameson declares that she saw Mrs. Siddons sitting near Gainsborough’s portrait two years before her death, and, looking from one to the other, she says, “It was like her still, at the age of seventy.”
Years after, Fanny Kemble, her grand-daughter, while walking through the streets of Baltimore, saw an engraving of Reynolds’s “Tragic Muse” and Lawrence’s picture of John Kemble’s “Hamlet.” “We stopped,” she says, “before them, and my father looked with a great deal of emotion at these beautiful representations of his beautiful kindred. It was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in this other world, where we are wandering aliens and strangers.”
From the numerous portraits extant of Mrs. Siddons we can form an idea of her appearance, of which such legendary accounts have been handed down. She was much above middle height; as a girl she was exceedingly thin and spare, and this remained her characteristic until she was about twenty-two or three. “Sarah Kemble would be a fine-looking woman one of these days,” a friend of her father remarked, “provided she could but add flesh to her bones, and provided her eyes were as small again.”
This is, in fact, what did occur. Her increasing plumpness rounded off all angles, making the eyes less prominent; and at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five she was in the very prime of her marvellous beauty. She had a singular energy and elasticity of motion. Her head was beautifully set on her shoulders. Her features were fine and expressive, the nose a little long, but counterbalanced by the height of the brow, and firmly-modelled chin. The eye-brows were marked, and ran straight across the brow; her eyes positively flamed at times. A fixed pallor overspread her features in later days, which was seldom tinged with colour. It is difficult, looking at the stately fine lady painted by Gainsborough, to imagine the bursts of passion that convulsed her on the stage. Her voice, as years matured its power, was capable of every inflection of feeling; while her articulation was singularly clear and exact. There was no undue raising of the voice, no overdoing of action; all was moderate and quiet until passion was demanded, and then swift and sudden it burst forth.
In Kemble’s manner at times there was a sacrifice of energy to grace. This observation, Braden tells us, was made by Mrs. Siddons herself, who admired her brother, in general, as much as she loved him. She illustrated her meaning by rising and placing herself in the attitude of one of the old Egyptian statues; the knees joined together, and the feet turned a little inwards. Placing her elbows close to her sides, she folded her hands, and held them upright, with the palms pressed to each other. Having made those present observe that she had assumed one of the most constrained, and, therefore, most ungraceful positions possible, she proceeded to recite the curse of King Lear on his undutiful offspring, in a manner which made hair rise and flesh creep, and then called on us to remark the additional effect which was gained by the concentrated energy which the unusual and ungraceful posture in itself implied.
It is a characteristic trait, that by the Kemble family John should have been considered a finer player than Sarah. We know that he continually gave her directions and instructions, which she accepted with all humility, and followed, until she had made herself sure of her ground. No one, however gifted, could then shake her conscientious adherence to her own views.
The subtle difference that lies between genius and talent separated the two. Kemble repeated beautiful words suitably; Mrs. Siddons was magnificent before she spoke, thrilling her audience with a silence more significant than all else in the development of human emotion. We can see how grand she was, independently of her author, by the miserable plays she made famous; when her genius was no longer present to breathe life and passion into them they passed into oblivion.