CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE.
As Sarah Kemble passed from childhood to early womanhood, she continued to act the round of all the company’s plays, taking more important parts as she grew older. The very atmosphere she breathed was dramatic. To walk the stage was a second nature to her. She was not, however, at the same time shut out from common-place every-day matters. She helped her mother in the household work, and went from a rehearsal to the making of a pudding or the darning of a pair of stockings. There is little doubt that this free mixing in the simple family life of her home gave a healthy balance to her mind. Like her mother, she always kept her domestic life intact in the midst of her professional occupations, and ever remained simple and womanly. Her fine friends in later days would tell how they had found her ironing a frock for one of her children, or studying a new part while she rocked the cradle of the last baby.
At the age of sixteen, Sarah’s beauty had attracted the attention of her audiences. One or two squires of the county places they visited offered her their homage; but before she was seventeen her affections were already engaged by a member of the troupe, an ex-apprentice from Birmingham.
We have already seen the name of Siddons figuring on the Kemble play-bills, when Sarah was only thirteen years of age. We can imagine, therefore, all the opportunities that the young people had of falling in love, rehearsing together, acting together, with the continual communion of interest brought about by their profession. No wonder that even Mr. Evans, a Welsh squire, with three hundred a year, who, enslaved by Sarah’s singing of Robin, Sweet Robin, offered her his hand, was ignominiously refused. Her parents, however, took a different view, and, allured by the splendour of Mr. Evans’s offer, revoked the unwilling consent they had given to their daughter’s engagement to Siddons, and summarily dismissed him from the company.
The indignant lover had recourse to a method of revenge that seems as novel as it was ungentlemanly. Being allowed a farewell benefit, he took the opportunity—it was at Brecon—of taking the audience into his confidence, and, in doggrel of the worst description, informed them of his woes:—
Ye ladies of Brecon, whose hearts ever feel
For wrongs like to this I’m about to reveal,
Excuse the first product, nor pass unregarded
The complaints of poor Colin, a lover discarded.