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Mr. Kemble told Mr. Croker that 'Mrs. Siddons's pathos in the last scene of The Stranger quite overcame him, but he always endeavoured to restrain any impulses which might interfere with his previous study of his part. Croker's Boswell, p. 742. Diderot, writing of the qualifications of a great actor, says: 'Je lui veux beaucoup de jugement; je le veux spectateur froid et tranquille de la nature humaine; qu'il ait par conséquent beaucoup de finesse, mais nulle sensibilité, ou, ce qui est la même chose, l'art de tout imiter, et une égale aptitude
Siddons's beauty than of the beauty of the girl who was wearing the dark-red rose! The strangers, strolling through the rooms, stopped now and again to peer curiously at the students' work. They were stared at indignantly by the students themselves, but they made no attempt to move away, and even ventured sometimes to pass criticisms of no tender character on some of the copies.
It may well be doubted whether Shakspeare's conception of Lady Macbeth or Desdemona was more perfect than Mrs Siddons's personation of them; or whether the grandeur of Cato or Coriolanus, as they existed in the original mind of Addison, or the patriarch of the English stage, equalled Kemble's inimitable performances of these characters.
He seems utterly prostrated in spirit, and I fear he will brood himself ill. God help us all! I came home with a heavy heart, and got ready my things for the theater, and went over my part. Emily called.... She brought me my aunt Siddons's sketches of Constance and Lady Macbeth.
When, in lier beautiful closes, she prolonged a tone, attenuated it by degrees, and falling gently upon the final note, the sound, though as ethereal as the sighing of a breeze, reached, like Mrs. Siddons's whisper in Lady Macbeth, every part of the immense theatre.
After breakfast practised till eleven, and then went to rehearsal; after which Emily Fitzhugh came for me, and we drove out to Bannisters. Poor Mrs. Fitzhugh was quite overcome at seeing my father, whom she has not seen since Mrs. Siddons's death; we left her with him to talk over Campbell's application to her for my aunt's letters. He has behaved badly about the whole business, and I hope Mrs.
Bradshaw, whose looks rather disappointed me, because she "did contrive to make herself look so beautiful" on the stage, in Clari and Mary Copp and everything she did; I suppose her exquisite acting got into her face, somehow. Henry Greville is delightful, and I like him very much. When we left Bridgewater House we drove to my aunt Siddons's.
We never remember to have seen a stronger levée en masse of cambric handkerchiefs in honour of O'Neill's Mrs Haller, or Siddons's Isabella, than of the ballet of "Nina;" while the affecting death-dance in "Masaniello" is still fresh in the memory of the admirers of Pauline Leroux.
Mr. Macready revived Massinger's fine play with considerable success, but both the matter and the manner of our dramatic ancestors is too robust for the audiences of our day, who nevertheless will go and see "Diane de Lys," by a French company of actors, without wincing. Of Mrs. Siddons's Mrs.
Siddons's youngest son, Harry, the only one of my aunt's children who adopted her own profession, and who, himself an indifferent actor, undertook the management of the Edinburgh theater, fell into ill-health, and died, leaving his lovely young widow with four children to the care of her brother, William Murray, who succeeded him in the government of the theater, of which his sister and himself became joint proprietors.
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