Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/206

 matter of fact he paid her much attention, and gave her the part of Venus in a revival of the ‘Jubilee,’ and other opportunities of which little was made. She herself seems to have thought, with probability, that he was impeded in his schemes for her advancement by the morbid jealousy of Mrs. Yates and Miss Younge, against whom he wished to play her off. She was acting in Birmingham under Yates when she received the intelligence that her services would not be required at Drury Lane.

In the winter of 1776 she was at Manchester, where she became the rage. On 15 April 1777 she made, when in a bad state of health, her first appearance in York as Euphrasia in the ‘Grecian Daughter,’ Tate Wilkinson, her manager, playing Evander. She was accompanied by her husband, and played Rosalind, Matilda, Alicia, Lady Townly, Lady Alton, Indiana, Widow Brady, Arpasia, Horatia, and Semiramis. Her success was brilliant, Tate Wilkinson declaring that ‘in her Arpasia, I recollect her fall and figure after the dying scene was noticed as most elegant; nor do I recognise such a mode of disposing the body in so picturesque and striking a manner as Mrs. Siddons does on such prostrate occasions’ (Wandering Patentee, i. 254). In the summer of 1777 she was in Liverpool, and in the winter presumably in Manchester. On 24 Oct., as Lady Townly in the ‘Provoked Husband,’ she made her first appearance under Palmer in Bath, where, during the season, she was seen as Mrs. Candour, Mrs. Lovemore in the ‘Way to keep him,’ Elwina in ‘Percy,’ Lady Jane in ‘Know your own Mind,’ Belvidera in ‘Venice Preserved,’ Lady Brumpton in the ‘Funeral,’ Queen in ‘Hamlet,’ Portia, Countess in ‘Countess of Salisbury,’ Euphrasia, Millwood in the ‘London Merchant,’ Rosamond in ‘Henry II,’ Queen in ‘Spanish Friar,’ Juliet, Imoinda in ‘Oroonoko,’ Bellario in ‘Philaster,’ Princess in the ‘Law of Lombardy,’ Imogen, Miss Aubrey in ‘Fashionable Lover,’ Queen in ‘Richard III’ (after which she recited a monody on Garrick), Indiana in ‘Conscious Lovers,’ Emmeline in ‘Edgar and Emmeline,’ Sigismunda in ‘Tancred and Sigismunda,’ Lady Randolph in ‘Douglas,’ Jane Shore, and Emmelina in the ‘Fatal Falsehood’—a remarkable variety of characters for so young a woman. Most of these parts had previously been played in Liverpool, where also she had been seen as the Countess of Somerset in ‘Sir Thomas Overbury,’ Clarinda in the ‘Suspicious Husband,’ Statira, Cleopatra, Miranda in the ‘Busy Body,’ Miss Richland in ‘Good-natured Man,’ Mrs. Clerimont in ‘Tender Husband,’ and other parts. In Bath she reopened the following season in her great character of Lady Macbeth, and here she remained during the three following seasons, four seasons in all. Here or in Bristol, the theatre in which city was under the same management, she played over a hundred different parts, of which it is needless to mention more than Lady in ‘Comus,’ Isabella in ‘Measure for Measure,’ Beatrice, Queen Katherine, Desdemona, Mrs. Strictland, Lady Brute, Calista, Monimia, Andromache, Elfrida, Mrs. Beverley, Miss Hardcastle, Zara in ‘Mourning Bride’ and in ‘Zara,’ Mrs. Oakly, Nell in ‘The Devil to Pay,’ Countess of Narbonne, and Constance in ‘King John.’ She delivered occasionally addresses, not specially noteworthy for good taste. In her farewell address in Bath, written by herself in verse, she brought on the stage her three children—Henry, Sarah, and Maria—and introduced them to the audience. On 27 June 1781 she played ‘Hamlet’ in an alteration of the tragedy by Garrick and Lee, Miss Kemble being the Queen and Siddons the Guildenstern. Most of the parts mentioned were subsequently seen in London.

It was impossible for the London managers to shut their ears to the rumours of her triumphs in Bath. Aristocratic patronage did something for her; but Henderson, who from the first recognised her greatness, seems to have been the first who induced the Drury Lane management to make some timorous advances. Her difficulties about reappearing in London were conquered; terms were, after some wrangling, arranged; and on 10 Oct. 1782, as Mrs. Siddons from Bath, she reappeared at Drury Lane, playing Isabella in the piece so named—Garrick's version of Southerne's ‘Fatal Marriage.’ Her triumph was immediate and complete, so complete that her merit was said by Davies to have swallowed up all remembrance of present and past performers. At this moment she is thus described by him: ‘The person of Mrs. Siddons is greatly in her favour; just rising above the middle stature, she looks, walks, and moves like a woman of a superior rank. Her countenance is expressive, her eye so full of information, that the passion is told from her look before she speaks. Her voice, though not so harmonious as Mrs. Cibber's’ (to which it had some resemblance), ‘is strong and pleasing; nor is a word lost for want of due articulation. … She excels all persons in paying attention to the business of the scene; her eye never wanders from the person she speaks to, or should look at when she is silent. Her modulation of grief, in her plaintive pronunciation of