Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume III Part 19

[Footnote 8: She afterwards played Lady Randolph for Mr. Charles Kemble's benefit, and performed Lady Macbeth at the request of the Princess Charlotte in 1816. This was her final appearance. She was then sixty-one, and her powers unabated. I recollect a characteristic pa.s.sage in one of her letters relating to this circ.u.mstance: she says, "The princess honoured me with several gracious (not _graceful_) nods; but the newspapers gave me credit for much more _sensibility_ than I either felt or displayed on the occasion. I was by no means so much _overwhelmed_ by her Royal Highness's kindness, as they were pleased to represent me."]

[Footnote 9:

"For time hath laid his hand so gently on her As he too had been awed."

DE MONTFORT.]

[Footnote 10: The last play she read aloud was Henry V. only ten days before she died.]

[Footnote 11: Now Mrs. George Combe.]

[Footnote 12: These sketches, once intended for publication, are now in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton. The introduction and notes were written in March, 1830--the conclusion in March, 1834.]

[Footnote 13: The alteration and interpolations are by Garrick, of whom it was said and believed, that "he never read through a whole play of Shakspeare's except with some nefarious design of cutting and mangling it."]

[Footnote 14: She played in London the following parts successively:-- Juliet, Belvidera, the Grecian Daughter, Mrs. Beverley, Portia, Isabella, Lady Townly, Calista, Bianca, Beatrice, Constance, Camiola, Lady Teazle, Donna Sol, (in Lord Francis Egerton's translation of Hemani, when played before the queen at Bridgewater House,) Queen Katherine, Catherine of Cleves, Louisa of Savoy, in Francis I., Lady Macbeth, Julia in the Hunchback.]

[Footnote 15: The only parts which, to my knowledge, she chose for herself, were Portia, Camiola, and Julia in the Hunchback. She was accused of having declined playing Inez de Castro in Miss Mitford's tragedy, and I heard her repel that accusation very indignantly.

She added--"Setting aside my respect for Miss Mitford, I never, on principle, have refused a part. It is my business to do whatever is deemed advantageous to the whole concern, to do as much good as I can; not to think of myself. If they bid me act Scrubb, I would act it!"]

[Footnote 16: At Dresden and at Frankfort I saw the Merchant of Venice played as it stands in Shakspeare, with all the stately scenes between Portia and her suitors--the whole of the character of Jessica--the lovely moon-light dialogue between Jessica and Lorenzo, and the beautiful speeches given to Portia, all which, by sufferance of an English audience, are omitted on our stage. When I confessed to some of the great German critics, that the Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, &c.

were performed in England not only with important omissions of the text, but with absolute alterations, affecting equally the truth of character, and the construction of the story, they looked at me, at first, as if half incredulous, and their perception of the barbarism, as well as the absurdity, was so forcibly expressed on their countenances, and their contempt so justifiable, that I confess I felt ashamed for my countrymen.]

[Footnote 17: The resemblance was in the brow and eye. When she was sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence, he said, "These are the eyes of Mrs.

Siddons." She said, "You mean _like_ those of Mrs. Siddons." "No," he replied, "they are the _same_ eyes, the construction is the same, and to draw them is the same thing."

I have ever been at a loss for a word which should express the peculiar property of an eye like that of Mrs. Siddons, which could not be called piercing or penetrating, or any thing that gives the idea of searching or acute; but it was an eye which, in its softest look, and, to a late period of her life, went straight into the depths of the soul as a ray of light finds the bottom of the ocean. Once, when I was conversing with the celebrated German critic, Bottigar, of Dresden, and he was describing the person of Madame Schirmer, after floundering in a sea of English epithets, none of which conveyed his meaning, he at last exclaimed with enthusiasm--"Madam! her eye was _perforating_!"]

[Footnote 18: In the Hunchback.]

[Footnote 19: In the Fatal Marriage.]

[Footnote 20: I recollect being present when some one was repeating to her a very high-flown and enthusiastic eulogy, of which she was the subject. She listened very quietly, and then said with indescribable _naivete_--"Perhaps I ought to blush to have all these things thus repeated to my face; but the truth is, I _cannot_. I cannot, by any effort of my own imagination, see myself as people speak of me. It gives no reflection back to my mind. I cannot fancy myself like this.

All I can clearly understand is, that you and every body are very much pleased, and I am very glad of it!"]

[Footnote 21: It must be remembered that it was not _only_ fas.h.i.+onable incense and public applause; it was the open enthusiastic admiration of such men as Sir Walter Scott, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Moore, Rogers, Campbell, Barry Cornwall, and others of great name, who brought rich flattery in prose and in verse, and laid it at her feet. Just before she came on the stage she had spent about a year in Scotland with her excellent relative and friend, Mrs. Henry Siddons, and always referred to this period as her "Sabbatical year, granted to her to prepare her mind and principles for _this great trial_."]

[Footnote 22: Her own words.]

[Footnote 23: First published in 1827. The anecdote on which this tale is founded, I met with in the first volume of Dow's Translation of Ferishta's History of Judea.]

[Footnote 24: _Vide_ the Heetopadessa.]

[Footnote 25: Afterwards the Emperor Jehangire.]

[Footnote 26: This little tale was written in March, 1826, and in the hands of the publishers long before the appearance of Bainim's novel of "The Nowlans" which contains a similar incident, probably founded on the same fact.]

[Footnote 27: This little tale (written in 1830) is founded on a striking incident related in Humboldt's narrative. The facts remain unaltered.]

[Footnote 28: It need hardly be observed that this little trifle was written exclusively for very young actors, to whom the style was adapted; and though below all criticism, it has been included here to gratify those for whom it was originally written, and as a memorial of past times. The subject is imitated from one of Theodore Leclerq's _Proverbes Dramatiques_.]