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22 the lonely glades, and amongst the stately elm-groves of Guy's Cliff, or along the shores of the soft-flowing Avon, Shakespeare's Avon, that glides at the foot of the rocks between green meadows, dreaming of her love, and reading the poet she loved so well, whose birth-place and burial-place lay so near where she was. She must have heard reminiscences told of the great Jubilee that had taken place in 1769, only three years before, when Mr. Garrick and a "brilliant company of nobility and gentry," had come down to Stratford to celebrate the Shakesperean centenary. She little knew then that it was in a repetition of the Jubilee procession on the boards of Drury Lane she was destined to make her first bow to a London audience. There is a tradition that she met Garrick during her stay at Guy's Cliff. It is not impossible, as, after the Jubilee, he was a constant guest of the Greatheeds. The statement hardly tallies, however, with his writing some-*time later to Moody to the effect that there "was a woman Siddons" acting at Liverpool, who might suit the Drury Lane company, and asking him to go and have a look at her. He might easily, however, have failed to connect the girl Sarah Kemble with the woman Mrs. Siddons.

It redounds much to the credit both of the Greatheeds and the actress, that afterwards, in spite of the change of circumstances, Mrs. Siddons ever remained a firm friend of the family. We find Miss Berry in 1822, forty-seven years later, writing in her journal:—

"Guy's Cliff, Tuesday, Jan. 1st.—Mrs. Siddons and her daughter arrived.

"Wednesday, 2nd.—Mrs. Siddons read Othello, the two parts of Iago and Othello, quite à merveille."

We find Bertie Greatheed standing sponsor for her