Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/202

190 the "Muse"—beautiful, clever, fascinating, stuttering Mrs. Inchbald. When her husband died, it was universally said he would marry her. Fanny Kemble tells an incident that occurred long after Kemble was married. Mrs. Inchbald and Miss Mellon were sitting by the fire-place in the green-room, waiting to be called upon the stage. The two were laughingly discussing their male friends and acquaintances from the matrimonial point of view. John Kemble, who was standing near, at length jestingly said to Mrs. Inchbald, who had been comically energetic in her declarations of whom she could or would or never could or would have married, "Well, Mrs. Inchbald, would you have had me?" "Dear heart," said the stammering beauty, turning her sweet sunny face up to him, "I'd have j-j-j-jumped at you!"

The lady he did eventually marry was no beauty and no "Muse," but, much to the indignation of Mrs. Siddons, as people said at the time, a very ordinary young woman, daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins, prompter and actress at Drury Lane. Priscilla, however, made him a good wife, and he never had cause to regret his choice.

The next brother to John, Stephen, although almost born on the stage, had none of the requisites either of talent or facility to make him a good actor. Only a few days before John's first appearance in London, Stephen appeared before the public as Othello. It was said that the manager had made a mistake, and had engaged the "big" instead of the "great" Mr. Kemble. Stephen's great boast all his life was that he was the only actor who could play Falstaff "without stuffing." His qualifications were those of a boon companion rather than of an actor. He very soon