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The ten all simultaneously bowed at this as if they were worked by machinery, and then everyone sat down to supper, Mr Theodore Wopples taking the head of the table. All the family seemed to admire him immensely, and kept their eyes fastened on his face with affectionate regard. 'Pa, whispered Miss Siddons Wopples to Villiers, who sat next to her, 'is a most wonderful man.
But his confidence in his own popularity helped his love of good acting to prevail; and he made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay of the grand school of acting, and to invent or republish anecdotes of Mrs. Siddons. This time Mrs. Byron said nothing about detesting the stage.
The actress who, we think, comes nearest to her in genteel comedy, is Mrs Henry Siddons, in her beautiful representation of such parts as Beatrice or Viola; but she has not the same appearance of natural light-hearted buoyancy and playfulness of disposition; you see occasional transient indications of a serious thoughtful turn of mind, which assumes gaiety and cheerfulness, rather than passes naturally into it; which you admire, because it places the actress in a more amiable light, but which takes off from the fidelity and perfection of her art.
Perhaps there is no instance so striking as this of the immense difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one monosyllable. Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every actress had replied, "We fail?" interrogatively, and then encouragingly, "Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail." Such the commonplace reciters.
We hope to hold a little reception here within a short time possibly any minute now." "Who is to be honored, Major?" Larkin asked. "A rather well known gentleman," Cowan replied, tantalizingly. "Both of you are quite well acquainted with Lieutenant Siddons, I believe?" Larkin looked at McGee in astonishment. "No, sir," McGee replied to Cowan, "no one in this outfit knows that fellow very well."
How this extraordinary change was accomplished I know not; but only that it took place, and that Maria Siddons became engaged to her sister's faithless lover.
Englishmen of her day will never believe that Katharine of Arragon could have looked otherwise than Mrs. Siddons did in Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII.;" but nothing could in truth be more unlike the historical woman than the tall, large, bare-armed, white-necked, Juno-eyed, ermine-robed ideal of queenship of the English stage. GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 12, 1831.
Twiss was, like every member of my father's family, at one time on the stage, but left it very soon, to marry the grim-visaged, gaunt-figured, kind-hearted gentleman and profound scholar whose name she at this time bore, and who, I have heard it said, once nourished a hopeless passion for Mrs. Siddons. Mrs.
Siddons would have been at home there, for there was nothing for it but to stab the potatoes, and all one's cunning of fence was needed to hold one's own with the chops. But how delicious they were!
William Shannon, an excellent but not exciting preacher, who was a devoted friend of Mrs. Harry Siddons; and occasionally we went to Dr. Allison's church and heard him then an old man preach, and sometimes his young assistant, Mr. Sinclair, whose eloquent and striking sermons, which impressed me much, were the only powerful direct appeals made to my religious sentiments at that time.
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