As they walked round the hall, Campbell tells us, he saw every eye fixed upon her. Her stately bearing, her noble expression, made a sensation, though the crowd evidently did not know who she was, as he heard whispers of “Who is she? Is she not an Englishwoman?”
Crabb Robinson, in his Memoirs, also tells us that he heard someone say in the Louvre, “Mrs. Siddons is below.” He instantly left the Raphaels and Titians and went in search of her. She was walking with her sister, Mrs. Twiss. He noticed her grand air and fascinating smile, but he was disturbed that so glorious a head should have been covered with a small chip hat. She knit her brows, also, to look at the pictures, as if her sight were not good; and he remarked a line or two about her mouth, and a little coarseness of expression. She remained two months in Paris, and we hear of her going to a review held by the King. She was seen toiling along towards the Champs de Mars, heated and flushed, and in clouds of dust; and a joke is made on the subject of her “saving.”
Further suffering was in store for her in the death of her son Henry. He died of consumption, like his sisters. Manager of the Edinburgh Theatre, and in the prime of life, his loss was a great one both to his family and the Edinburgh public. His poor mother wrote:—
“Westbourne, 1815.
“This third shock has, indeed, sadly shaken me, and, although in the very depths of affliction, I agree with you that consolation may be found, yet the voice of nature will for a time overpower that of reason; and I cannot but remember ‘that such things were, and were most dear to me.’
“I am tolerably well, but have no voice. This is entirely nervousness, and fine weather will bring it back to me. Write to me, and let me receive consolation in a better account of your precious health. My brother and Mrs. Kemble have been very kind and attentive, as indeed they always were in all events of sickness or of sorrow. The little that was left of my poor sight is almost washed away by tears, so that I fear I write scarce legibly. God’s will be done!”
Later, she complained:—
“I don’t know why, unless that I am older and feebler, or that I am now without a profession, which forced me out of myself in my former afflictions, but the loss of my poor dear Henry seems to have laid a heavier hand upon my mind than any I have sustained. I drive out to recover my voice and my spirits, and am better while abroad; but I come home and lose them both in an hour. I cannot read or do anything else but puddle with my clay. I have begun a full-length figure of Cecilia; and this is a resource which fortunately never fails me. Mr. Fitzhugh approves of it, and that is good encouragement. I have little to complain of, except a low voice and lower spirits.”
All these letters do not look like the proud, hard, self-sufficient woman so often described. We see her sorrowing sincerely, but not giving way to unreasoning, despairing grief; recognising that all the brightness and elasticity of life had gone, but doing, nobly and practically, what she could to help those that were left.
Before the end of the year she had arranged with Mr. James Ballantyne to act ten nights for the benefit of her son’s family:—