Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/268

256 comfortable house, panelled in dark oak. The approach to the staircase has steps ascending and descending, and the stairs themselves twist round corners, off which branch unexpected passages, until they reach the first floor, where to the right opens the dining-room, looking on the little garden, and beyond to the Park. There, between the Grecian pillars with their honey-*suckle pediment, once hung the portrait of her brother John as Hotspur; now the space looks desolate and bare.

Here she lived with her daughter Cecilia and Patty Wilkinson, her attached friend and companion. Some among us are old enough to remember having heard of her pleasant parties where all that was intellectual and delightful in the London of her day was assembled. There she would sometimes, to her intimate friends, give recitations of her favourite parts, having by this time relinquished doing so in public. Miss Edgeworth describes one of these readings:—

I heard Mrs. Siddons read at her town-house a portion of Henry VIII. I was more struck and delighted than I ever was with any reading in my life. This is feebly expressing what I felt. I felt that I had never before fully understood, or sufficiently admired, Shakespeare, or known the full powers of the human voice and the English language. Queen Katherine was a character peculiarly suited to her time of life and to reading. There was nothing that required gesture or vehemence incompatible with the sitting attitude. The composure and dignity, and the sort of suppressed feeling, and touches, not bursts of tenderness, of matronly, not youthful tenderness, were all favourable to the general effect. I quite forgot to applaud—I thought she was what she appeared. The illusion was perfect, till it was interrupted by a hint from her daughter or niece, I forget which, that Mrs. Siddons would be encouraged by having some demonstration given of our feelings. I then expressed my admiration, but the charm was broken.

Maria Edgeworth seems to have remained friends with Mrs. Siddons, but her father, Richard Lovell