The number of indifferent plays she was entreated to appear in were legion. All her friends seemed to think they could write plays, and that she was the one and only person who could appear in them. We find her piteously writing to a friend who had sent her a tragedy:—
“It is impossible for you to conceive how hard it is to say that Astarte will not do as you and I would have it do. Thank God, it is over! It has been so bitter a sentence for me to pronounce, that it has wrung drops of sorrow from the very bottom of my heart. Let me entreat, if you have any idea that I am too tenacious of your honour, that you will suffer me to ask the opinion of others, which may be done without naming the author. I must, however, premise that what is charming in the closet often ceases to be so when it comes into consideration for the stage.”
Conceited Fanny Burney must needs write a tragedy, Edwin and Elgitha. Her stumbling-block was “Bishops.” At that time there was a popular drink called “Bishop,” composed of certain intoxicating ingredients. When, therefore, in one of the earlier scenes the King gave the order “Bring in the Bishop,” the audience went into roars of laughter. The dying scene seemed to have no effect in damping their mirth. A passing stranger, in a tragic tone, proposed to carry the expiring heroine to the other side of a hedge. This hedge, though remote from any dwelling, proved to be a commodious retreat, for, in a few minutes afterwards, the wounded lady was brought from behind it on an elegant couch, and, after dying in the presence of her husband, was removed once more to the back of the hedge. The effect proved too ridiculous for the audience, and Mrs. Siddons was carried off amidst renewed roars of laughter.
Dr. Whalley must then needs press a tragedy of his own upon her, The Castle of Mowal, which was yawned at for three nights. It is said that when the author went down to Mr. Peake, the treasurer, to know what benefit might have accrued to him, it amounted to nothing. “I have been,” said the doctor, an old picquet-player, “piqued and repiqued”; and so he retired from the scene of his discomfiture to Bath, where he plumed himself on the fact of having “run for three nights.”
Her next essay in the cause of friendship was in Bertie Greatheed’s tragedy of The Regent. She writes in reference to it:—
“The plot of the poor young man’s piece, it strikes me, is very lame, and the characters very—very ill-sustained in general; but more particularly the lady, for whom the author had me in his eye. This woman is one of those monsters (I think them) of perfection, who is an angel before her time, and is so entirely resigned to the will of Heaven, that (to a very mortal like myself) she appears to be the most provoking piece of still life one ever had the misfortune to meet. Her struggles and conflicts are so weakly expressed, that we conclude they do not cost her much pain, and she is so pious that we are satisfied she looks upon her afflictions as so many convoys to Heaven, and wish her there, or anywhere else but in the tragedy. I have said all this, and ten times more, to them both, with as much delicacy as I am mistress of; but Mr. G. says that it would give him no great trouble to alter it, provided I will undertake the milksop lady. I am in a very distressed situation, for, unless he makes her a totally different character, I cannot possibly have anything to do with her.”
The piece was eventually performed for twelve nights, and then consigned to oblivion; but the author was so satisfied that he gave a supper, which was followed by a drinking-bout at the “Brown Bear” in Bow Street, at which a subordinate actor named Phillimore was sufficiently tipsy to have courage enough to fight his lord and master, John Kemble, who was elevated enough to defend himself, and generous enough to forget the affair next morning.
Other parts were declined by her for other reasons. Colman had written an epilogue to Mr. Jephson’s Julia, which she refused to speak because she declared it to be “coarse;” and the part of Cleopatra, she said she never would act, because “she would hate herself if she were to play it as she thought it should be played.” And there she was right; the “Serpent of Old Nile” was not within her range.
One of her admirers tells us that her majestic and imposing person, and the commanding character of her beauty, militated against the effect she produced in the part of Mrs. Haller. “No man alive or dead,” said he, “would have dared to take a liberty with her; wicked she might be, but weak she could not be, and when she told the story of her ill-conduct in the play nobody believed her.” Another eye-witness, speaking of “the fair penitent,” said that it was worth sitting out the piece for her scene with Romont alone, to see “such a splendid animal in such a magnificent rage.”
And yet, what a kind heart it was to an erring sister! “Charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson,” she writes, referring to Perdita Robinson, “I pity her from the bottom of my soul.” And what a generous helping hand she stretched out to her younger colleagues. When Miss Mellon, twenty years her junior, was acting with her at Liverpool, Mrs. Siddons one morning at rehearsal turned to an actor, a friend of hers, who had known her for years, and said: