Roger Kemble on Marriage.

While still in her teens Sarah became infatuated with William Siddons, a handsome but somewhat insipid actor in her father's company.  Such an attachment had the disapproval of her parents, who wished her to accept the offer of a squire.  William Siddons was dismissed from the company and Sarah was sent to undertake a situation as Lady's Maid at Guy's Cliff in Warwickshire 

The necessary consent to her marriage to William Siddons was at last obtained, and the marriage took place in Trinity Church, Coventry, in November 1773.

'I forbade you,' said old Roger Kemble, when he heard of Sarah's marriage, 'to marry an actor. You will not have disobeyed me when you marry Siddons. He is not, he was not, he never will be an actor.'

The new Mrs Siddons, aged 18, joined a new acting company. 

It was whilst playing at Cheltenham in 1774 that she gained the earliest recognition of her powers as an actress.  Her performance as Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved won the appreciation of a party of 'people of quality', who had come to scoff.  When the theatre producer, David Garrick, was told of her acting, he sent a representative to see her; she was playing Rosalinda in As You Like It in a barn in Worcestershire and was also pregnant.  Garrick offered her an engagement, but she could not accept until after the child was born. 

When she appeared with Garrick at Drury Lane London in 1775, she was a failure.  She then went back on tour in the country, where she earned great favour, becoming the tragedy queen of the English stage.   William Hazlitt wrote of her that 'passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine, she was tragedy personified'.

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Dr Johnson and Mrs Siddons

When Mrs. Siddons visited Doctor Johnson, he paid her two or three very elegant compliments when she retired. He said to Dr. Glover that she was a prodigious fine woman.

Asked if she was not finer on the stage when adorned by art, he replied: ‘Sir, on the stage art does not adorn; nature adorns her there, and art glorifies her’ (Memoirs of Charles Lee Lewes, i. 114).

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Mrs Sarah Siddons in Edinburgh

The Parliamentary Act for the New Town of Edinburgh contained a clause, which empowered the Crown to grant Royal Letters Patent for a Theatre. On the 16th March, 1768, the foundation stone of the Theatre Royal was laid, and for ninety years it formed the scene of some of the most notable triumphs in Scots drama.

Engraved on a silver plate of the stone was the inscription:-

'The first stone of this new theatre was laid on the 16th day of March in the year of our Lord 1768 by David Ross, patentee and first proprietor of a licensed stage in Scotland. May this theatre tend to promote every moral and every virtuous principle, and may the representation be such.'

The assumption of the managerial reins by Mr. John Jackson in 1781 brought the advent of Mrs. Siddons in Edinburgh. Her first appearance was made on 22nd May, 1784, in Venice Preserved, where she played Belvidera to the Jaffier of Wood, an Edinburgh man. That the engagement was a successful one is confirmed by an excerpt from the Edinburgh Weekly Magazine of that date:-

'The manager took the precaution after the first night to have an officer and Guard of Soldiers at the principal door. But several scuffles having ensued through the eagerness of the people to get places, and the soldiers having been rash enough to use their bayonets, it was thought advisable to withdraw the guards on the third night, lest any accident had happened from the pressure of the crowd, who began to assemble round the doors at 11 in the forenoon.'

Her first performance was not without its trials. The undemonstrative character of her audience was not an inspiring spectacle. Thomas Campbell, in speaking of her reception, and its apparent coldness, tells how Mrs. Siddons, having summoned all her powers in an effort to electrify the audience, she paused and looked at the sea of stony faces. The deep silence was at length broken by a voice exclaiming, 'That's no' bad!'  The ludicrous parsimony of praise at once convulsed the audience with laughter. But the laugh was followed by such thunders of applause 'that, amidst her stunned and nervous agitation, she was not without fear of the galleries coming down."

' For this first visit her repertoire included The Gamester, Mourning Bride, Douglas, Isabella, Jane Shore, and The Grecian Daughter. Her earnings for the ten nights were £50 nightly, with an additional sum of £350 which she received on the night of her benefit, as well as a magnificent presentation of plate. On the second visit in 1785 there was a decided increase: in the figures, £120 per night being the average earning, with £200 for a performance of The Gamester.

Text based on The Story of the Scots Stage By Robb Lawson (1919). Chapter Five

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Jane Austen misses performances by Mrs Siddons

In her letter to Cassandra Austen of the 25th April 1811, written from her brother Henry Austen’s home in Sloane Street, Jane Austen bemoaned her lot :

'I have no chance of seeing Mrs Siddons.  She did act on Monday but as Henry was told by the Boxkeeper that he did not think she would all the places and all the thought of it were given up. I should particularly have liked seeing her in Constance and could swear at her with little effort for disappointing me.'

Mrs Siddons was quite simply the most accomplished and most acclaimed actress of her day. She is still remembered today for her interpretation of tragic roles. No wonder Jane Austen was desperate to see her on stage..


For further information on Jane Austen and Siddons, please follow this LINK

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