About 1792 or 3 she seems to have taken a house at Nuneham, near the Harcourts—the Rectory, we presume, for we find her writing to Lord Harcourt, devising little comforts for their summer residence at Nuneham, thanking him for his “neighbourly” attention; and one or two letters she writes to John Taylor are dated Nuneham Rectory. One is on the subject of a Life of herself which he wished to undertake; the other refers to her modelling, and an accident which happened to her husband and children.
“I am in no danger of being too much occupied by my ‘favorite clay,’ for it is not arriv’d—how provoking and vexatious! particularly as I am dying to attempt a Bust of my sweet little George, and his Holidays will be over, I fear, before I am able to finish it. Apropos to George, the dear little Soul has escapd being dangerously hurt, if not kill’d (my blood runs cold at the thought), by almost a miracle. Mr. Siddons and Maria have not been so fortunate, they are both cripples at present with each a wounded Leg, but I hope they are in a fair way to get better. The accident (so these things are called, but not by me; I know you’ll deride my Superstition, but this kind of Superstition has not unfrequently afforded me great aid and consolation, and I hate to discard an old friend because she happens to be a little out of Fashion, so Laugh on, I dont care) happen’d from their being forcd to jump out of a little Market Cart which Mr. Siddons had orderd to indulge the children in a drive. Thank God I did not see it and that they have escapd so well!!! This is the Sweetest Situation in England, I believe. I wish you would come and see it. If I had a Bed to offer you I should be more pressing, but I could get you one at the Inn in the Village, if you should be disposd to go to those fine doings at Oxford, where all the world will be, except such Stupid Souls as myself. Mr. Combe is at Lord Harcourt’s; I understand he is writing a History of the Thames, and his Lordships House is the present Seat of his observations. I have not the pleasure to know him, but am to Dine with him at Lord H⸺’s to-morrow. [This is the Combe of Wolverhampton memory, whom Mrs. Kemble had refused as instructor for her daughter. The stately “I have not the pleasure to know him” is so like Mrs. Siddons.] Give my kind love to Betsey when you See her, and I earnestly entreat you (if it be not too much vanity to Suppose you wᵈ wish to preserve them a moment beyond reading them) that you will burn all my Letters; tell me Seriously you will do so! for there is nothing I dread like having all one’s nonsense appear in print by some untoward accident—not accident neither, but wicked or interested design, pray do me the favʳ to ask at our House why my precious Clay has not been Sent, and tell me Something about it when you write again. Adieu.”
CHAPTER XI.
SHERIDAN.
The apparition of Sheridan, meteor-like, in the laborious, active, well-regulated lives of Mrs. Siddons and her brother, and the history of his professional intercourse with them, is one of the greatest proofs of the extraordinary glamour exercised by the specious Irishman on all who came under his personal influence. After Garrick’s retirement from the management of Drury Lane, the overwhelming success of the School for Scandal, and the engagement of Mrs. Siddons, staved off financial difficulties for a time; but no amount of receipts were sufficient to withstand Sheridan’s reckless private expenditure and unbusiness-like habits. The brilliant Brinsley did not recognise that other qualities besides the power to write a good play, or make a great speech, were necessary for the management of such a concern as Garrick’s Drury Lane. The truth, however, was borne home to him by the utter chaos that ultimately ensued: actors unpaid, and the treasury repeatedly emptied by the proprietor himself before the money had been diverted into its legitimate channels. Yet the receipts at the doors amounted to nearly sixty thousand pounds a year. Things would have gone better could he have been persuaded entirely to abstain from management, but he persistently interfered with his subordinates. When a dramatist was employed in reading his tragedy to the performers, Brinsley would saunter in, yawning, at the fifth act, with no other apology than, having sat up late two nights running, he was unable to appear in time; or he would arrive drunk, go into the green-room, ask the name of a well-known actor who was on the stage, and bid them never to allow him to play again. He was once told, with some spirit, by one of the company, that he rarely came there, and then never but to find fault.
Things grew worse and worse. It was piteous to hear the complaints of the actors and staff of the theatre, who found it impossible to obtain payment of their weekly salaries. The shifts and devices which he employed to escape from their importunity was a constant subject of jest.
At last he was obliged to let the reins of management fall from his incapable hands. They were taken up by King; but he in turn soon found the position intolerable, and the stern and businesslike Kemble was called in to restore discipline among unruly players whose salaries were overdue, and amongst upholsterers and decorators who had never been paid for the pieces they had mounted.
It required the courage and determination of a Kemble to undertake the clearing out of such an Augean stable. “The public approbation of my humble endeavours in the discharge of my duties will be the constant object of my ambition,” he said, in his modest declaration on the acceptance of the appointment; “and as far as diligence and assiduity are claims to merit, I trust I shall not be found deficient.” Nor was he found deficient. Bringing extraordinary determination to the task, he soon got the theatre into order, with an efficient working company, of which he and his sister, Mrs. Siddons, were the ruling spirits.
Sheridan had not even the good sense in this critical juncture in his affairs to propitiate the great actress on whom the fortunes of the house rested. There is something comic, indeed, in his relations with the Tragedy Queen. They rather remind us of an incorrigible schoolboy continually offending those in authority, and yet confident in their affection and his own powers of persuasion to obtain indulgence and forgiveness.
Once Mrs. Siddons had declared that she would not act until her salary was paid, she resisted inflexibly the earnest appeals of her colleagues and the commands of the manager, and was quietly sewing at home after the curtain had risen for the piece in which she was expected to perform. Sheridan appeared, like the magician in a pantomime, courteous, irresistible; she yielded helplessly, “and suffered herself to be driven to the theatre like a lamb.”