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CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Kemble's range of parts at this period very limited.The Black Prince.-His sister, Miss E. Kemble.-Mrs. Siddons and her amazing exertions.-Her original appearance in 1775.-Mr. Siddons.-The published acknowledg ment of the great actress.-Johnstone in Irish characters. The Yates's-Whimsical letter of Yates on newspaper hints. Return of Mrs. Crawford. Compared with Mrs. Siddons.-Mr. Kemble in Richard III-Sir Giles Overreach.-King John.--The Critics.-Mr. Kemble's scene with Hubert.--Mrs. Siddons in Constance.-Her majestic sorrows.--Beverly.--The other theatre.-Massinger's picture.-More Ways than One.-Poor Soldier.--State of our Theatres.--Mrs. Siddons in Lady Randolph.-Its beau

ties.

MR. Kemble repeated his Hamlet on the 2d, 4th, 6th, 13th, and, 28th of October.

There was something remarkable in the management of that period, and which would have materially injured any actor but himself. I mean he was expected to keep his ground in tragedy, alone, against the amazing attraction of his sister, Mrs. Siddons. On the 8th of October she commenced her performances, that season, with the character of Isabella, by royal command. The regulations of the theatre did not allow Mr. Kemble to dispossess any actor of his accustomed parts. He was not permitted to strengthen either himself or his sister by acting with her. In Isabella the Biron was Smith, who retained also the Osmyn in the Mourning Bride. The Horatio and Lothario of the Fair Penitent were preoccupied, and Mr. Brereton and Mr. Bensley were the Jaffier and Pierre of Venice Preserved. In Jane Shore, Hastings and Dumont were equally and inalienably appropriated. And even on the 3d of November, when Isabella in Measure for Measure was performed by Mrs. Siddons, the Duke was acted by Mr. Smith, and nothing whatever was yielded to Mr. Kemble, on the ground either of his genius or the supposed influence of his sister.

He was therefore compelled to take his position upon some "removed ground," and got up Shirley's Edward the Black

Prince, which had sunk under Garrick; and the wits of the time called the revival a miracle,-the resurrection of the dead. They allowed him the aid of one sister, Miss E. Kemble, a lady of a beautiful figure and very expressive face; but, like Miss F. Kemble (the late Mrs. Twiss), doomed to fade away, before the amazing brilliancy of Mrs. Siddons. They, however, sustained the poet's severest test, to which female beauty and talent could be subjected.

"O blest with temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
She who can love a sister's charms, and hear
A sister's praises with unwounded ear."

The Hamlet, notwithstanding, kept its ground, thus thwarted and opposed. It became so clear and undeniable a proof of rare and genuine talent, that Mr. Harris, the ablest of generals, started Henderson's as a rival attraction; and the two greatest actors of their day were drawn into a competition, highly enjoyed by the town, and productive of much dispute, some research, and criticism sometimes vague, and sometimes partial and even blind.

It was a common thing to style the one all nature, and the other all art. To be sure, this was done with strict reciprocity; for two epigrams, I remember, appeared on the same day, addressed to the two Hamlets;-the writers agreeing in the attributes, only bestowing them upon different persons. I cannot be certain that the same muse did not, in this manner, pay court to each of the rivals.

On the first night Mr. Kemble had omitted the instructions to the Players, upon the modest principle, that he must first be admitted a master in the faculty, before he presumed to censure the faults of others.

"Let such teach others, who themselves excel,
And censure freely, who have ACTED well.”

He restored them afterwards, and gave the lesson very divertingly," Some of Nature's journeymen," with an arch smile; and becoming graver as he followed it by "they imitated humanity so abominably."

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In the quarrel at the grave, with Laertes, he was at first thought rather too quiet; but he worked it up by degrees to a "towering passion," and finally converted the Ossa of Mr. Barrymore into a mere wart, by throwing his millions of acres against the burning zone. Of rants, mere intended rants, this is one of the best going, and an especial favourite with the gods of the theatre.

"LAUD we the gods!

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils."

CYME.

Wo, at all events, to the refinement that would wish to "govern their roaring throats." They may sometimes burst in thunder upon a moment of exquisite and tender feeling; and is then hard to preserve a philosophic temperament. But nothing can to the actor compensate the cheer of their honest unrestrained applause.

I am now more immediately to notice the progress of Mrs. Siddons herself. From the 10th of October, 1782, to the 5th of June, 1783, is a period of 239 days. If we take away the Sundays and those of lenten entertainment, there will remain not quite 190 nights of dramatic performance. The amazing strength, as well as ardour, of this great actress, carried her through eighty nights of characters exceedingly trying to her feelings and her constitution. She had repeated,

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Her salary at this theatre was at first put greatly below her value; but she looked to a benefit for a larger supply. It was a night free from all charges, and her receipts were said to amount to upwards of 8007. The size of the theatre then may be conceived, when I state that it had never before held more than 300/. and numerically reckoning the audience at common prices, there was on that night 3307. It was the 14th December, 1782; the play was Venice Preserved, and she acted Belvidera.

Nor was this all, for on the 18th March following she had a second benefit, when she performed the character of Zara in the Mourning Bride. Very considerable presents were made her, accompanied by suitable expressions of admiration from persons of rank and talent. Buckingham House had not been wanting in those distinctions which majesty can confer, for Mrs. Siddons was appointed reading preceptress to the young princesses, by her majesty's express command. However, it became apparent that her health could not sustain any long continuance of such prodigious efforts as she had made during her first season. She frequently fainted

away at the close of her performances, and it was long before she was sufficiently recovered to be supported into her dressing-room. Nor were her effects upon her audiences less distressing. In her latter period, she called upon majesty and energy to supply the place of that exquisite tenderness, with which in her earlier days she had subdued every thing. that wore the human form. Upon some comparative babble having reached her in her retirement, she one day said, "To hear these people talk, one would think that I had never excited a tear." Alas! excuse the unthinking idlers, dear and incomparable woman! If in Lady Macbeth the terror you excited was unequalled,--the agony produced by your Isabella, your Belvidera, your Shore, your Mrs. Beverley, as little admitted any rational comparison.

What an astonishing change had taken place in the course of seven years, as to her powers themselves, or the public sense of them, or both! It was on the 29th November, 1775, that she made her first appearance at Drury Lane Theatre in Portia in the Merchant of Venice. It was once only repeated. She acted the Lady Anne in Richard III. to Mr. Garrick's Richard, and under the terror with which he im-* pressed her, hung back a little when they advanced together from the back of the stage. She has been heard to say, that the glance of reproach that he threw at her, was distressing long after to her recollection. He had clearly never seen the genius concealed under her timidity; and her other characters under his management were mere compliments to her personal loveliness. She acted in Colman's revival of Epicæne; the Black-moor washed White, which was damned; Love's Metamorphoses, acted for the benefit of Mrs. Wrighten and Mr. Vernon; Emily in Mrs. Cowley's Runaway, a character rising early and walking in a garden to be courted in a most trifling and apropos way. But this was not the climax of her walking talent; she walked as Venus in the procession of the Jubilee; and, at the end of the season, had the usual courteous permission to walk any where else; or, in plainer language, was discharged.

I remember that Mr. Siddons once told me, that I must not be astonished to hear, that he himself had been of rather greater value in the country than his wife, from his versatility as an acter. The domestic claims upon her exertions seem to have awakened a genius but little suspected, and stimulated that industry, without which in this difficult art even genius will attain but little.

Upon the unprecedented success of her benefit, Mrs. Siddons made her public acknowledgments for the patronage she

had received. It will at all events prove the modest deference with which then the greatest merit thought it becoming to address the public; and shall be preserved, as a formulary for talents inferior to her's.

"Mrs. Siddons would not have remained so long without expressing the high sense she had of the great honours done her at her late benefit, but that, after repeated trials, she could not find words adequate to her feelings; and she must at present be content with the plain language of a grateful mind,-that her heart thanks all her benefactors, for the distinguished, and, she fears, too partial encouragement, which they bestowed on this occcasion. She is told, that the splendid appearance on that night, and the emoluments arising from it, exceed any thing ever recorded on a similar account in the annals of the English stage; but she has not the vanity to imagine, that this arose from any superiority over many of her predecessors, or some of her cotemporaries. She attributes it wholly to that liberality of sentiment, which distinguishes the inhabitants of this great metropolis from those of any other in the world. They know her story: they know, that for many years, by a strange fatality, she was confined to move in a narrow sphere, in which the rewards attendant. on her labours were proportionally small. With a generosity unexampled, they proposed at once to balance the account, and pay off the arrears due, according to the rate, the too partial rate, at which they valued her talents. She knows the danger arising from extraordinary and unmerited favours, and will carefully guard against any approach of pride, too often their attendant. Happy shall she esteem herself, if, by the utmost assiduity, and constant exertion of her poor abilities, she shall be able to lessen, though hopeless ever to discharge, the vast debt she owes the public.

Drury Lane Theatre,

Dec. 17, 1782."

On the 2d October, 1785, Mr. Johnstone, who had been acting in Dublin at the same time as Mr. Kemble, and whose talent had likewise brought him to London, made his first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre, in Lionel, in the opera of Lionel and Clarissa. His voice was a clear melodious tenor, with a very sweet, though somewhat disproportionate, falsetto; and he sang in a plain and pleasing style, without the slightest affectation or mixture of the foreign graces in music. It was observed, that he spoke quite as well as he sang. His person was genteel, his features expressive, and his manners graceful and easy. Some time

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