"Siddons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less moved, in order take 400 Our argument. Enough is said to show How casual incidents of real life, Observed where pastime only had been sought, Outweighed, or put to flight, the set events And measured passions of the stage, albeit 405 By Siddons trod in the fulness of her power. Yet was the theatre my dear delight; The very gilding, lamps and painted scrolls, And all the mean upholstery of the place, Wanted not animation, when the tide 410 Of pleasure ebbed but to return as fast With the ever-shifting figures ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... countenance, though not very striking at first sight, is capable of wonderful variety and intensity of expression; her style of acting may be said to be intermediate between the matronly dignity and majestic deportment of Mrs Siddons, and the enchanting sweetness and feminine graces of Miss O'Neil. In the delineation of strong feelings and violent passions, of grief, madness, or despair, she will not suffer from comparison with either of these actresses; but we should doubt whether she can ever ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... during the period of his editorship. An excellent judge of verse, he collected 'Specimens of the British Poets' (1819), to which he added a valuable essay on poetry and short biographies. His 'Theodoric' (1824), 'Pilgrim of Glencoe' (1842), and Lives of Mrs. Siddons, Petrarch, and Shakespeare added nothing to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... leaves law and his jolly companions,—Brevoort, Kemble, Paulding, and the rest,—and sails for Bordeaux. He wanders through Southern Europe delightedly,—meets Washington Allston at Rome, and is half tempted to turn painter,—sees Humboldt, De Stael, Cooke, Siddons; and while all England is jubilant over Nelson's victory, and all England mourning over Nelson's death, he sails, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... case with that most amiable and gifted man, the late Sir Thomas Lawrence, who being engaged and about to be married to a daughter of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons, the young lady was suddenly snatched from him by a rapid consumption; and Sir Thomas remained faithful to her beloved memory, wearing mourning during his life, and ever after used black wax in sealing his letters, as the writer can prove by many, many received ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and took his way to Petticoat Lane. The compatriot of Rachel was wrapping up a scrag of mutton. She was a butcher's daughter and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed to have flourished the domestic table-knife. She was a simple, amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, and because there was no one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7, 1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive nights. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular stock piece—John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans, Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it—and in America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in England. (J.H. Caskey, The Life and Works of Edward Moore, ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... of insanity and wild pathos with which she spoke these last words, with her right arm, bare and extended, her left bent and shrouded beneath the dark red drapery of her mantle, might have been a study worthy of our Siddons herself. "And now," she said, resuming at once the short, stern, and hasty tone which was most ordinary to her—"let us to the wark—let ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... great actress, Sarah Siddons, written to John Taylor, shows kindness and compassion ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the unhappy lady, that her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an anecdote of a similar outburst—attested by Sir W. Scott, who was present on the occasion—before her marriage. Being present at a representation, in Edinburgh, of the Fatal Marriage, when Mrs. Siddons was personating Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of the theatre, screaming out "O my Biron, my Biron." All we know of her character shows it to have been not only proud, impulsive, and wayward, but hysterical. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... will show you how, Miss Hanley. This way: just shut down the case—snap!—and across the table she threw it, just as you would deal a card in a passion, only with a Mrs. Siddons' air to boot. I beg your pardons, both ladies, for mimicking your friend and your parent, but flesh and blood could not stand that sort of style, you know, and a little wholesome mimicry breaks no bones, and is not very offensive, I hope?" The mimicry could not indeed be very offensive, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Percy was introduced to the chief justice, the conversation began, from some slight remarks made by one of the company, on the acting of Mrs. Siddons. A lady who had just been reading the memoirs of the celebrated French actress, Mademoiselle Clairon, spoke of the astonishing pains which she took to study her parts, and to acquire what the French ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... only wish, in reading, is for more of it. But the life gathers interest as it proceeds. From America it extends to Europe, and we meet the names of Humboldt, De Stael, Allston, Vanderlyn, Mrs. Siddons, as among his associates even in early youth. So through Home Again and in Europe Again there is a constant succession of personal experience and wide opportunity to know the world. Did our limits permit, we would gladly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... to sentimentalise Lady Macbeth is partly due to Mrs. Siddons's fancy that she was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman, 'perhaps even fragile.' Dr. Bucknill, who was unaquainted with this fancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate,' 'unoppressed by weight of flesh,' 'probably small,' but 'a tawny or brown blonde,' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the essentially ridiculous. Salvini's Macbeth is undoubtedly a fine performance; and yet that great actor, as the result of his study, has placed it on record that he thinks the sleep-walking scene ought to be assigned to Macbeth instead of to his wife. Shades of Shakespeare and Siddons, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... the sensibility of the audience seemed equal to that of Mrs. Siddons. There was no eye within my view which did not 'silently a gentle tear let fall,' nor, though long hackneyed in music, did I find myself made of ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... far as we are aware, the pleasure of seeing himself for the first time "in print," and curiously enough here at the earliest beginning of his life as author he was intimately associated with Coleridge; indeed, his "effusion," a sonnet addressed to Mrs. Siddons, appeared in "The Morning Chronicle" on 29th December, with the signature "S. T. C." Coleridge, we learn from Lamb's letters, altered the sonnet and was welcome to do so, and the poem properly appears in both ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of an almost childish gaiety. In Yorkshire, we find the Inchbalds, the Siddonses, and Kemble retiring to the moors, in the intervals of business, to play blindman's buff or puss in the corner. Such were the pastimes of Mrs. Siddons before the days of her fame. No doubt this kind of lightheartedness was the best antidote to the experience of being "saluted with volleys of potatoes and broken bottles", as the Siddonses were by the citizens of Liverpool, for having ventured to appear on their ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... perhaps a parting gift from that choice spirit, the Major. She had laid aside her bonnet, and now appeared in a highly aristocratic and classical cap, meeting beneath her chin: a style of headdress so admirably adapted to her countenance, that if the late Mr Grimaldi had appeared in the lappets of Mrs Siddons, a more complete effect could not ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... earliest recognized her genius, 'a delirious popularity surrounded the young tragedienne, and with her the antique tragedy which she had revived.' How different from the original relation of Kemble, Kean, or Siddons to the Shaksperian drama! Then the manner in which she prepared herself for artistic triumph is equally suggestive of the artificial and the conventional: 'Elle se drape,' we are told, 'avec un art merveilleux; au theatre elle fait preuve ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of public decency is illustrated by the disappearance from the stage of the coarseness of earlier times. It was the golden age of the drama; for it saw the acting of Macklin and Garrick, of Mrs. Siddons, "the tragic muse," and her brother John Kemble, of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, "the comic muse," afterwards Countess of Derby, and Mrs. Jordan. As dramatists Home, Foote, Colman, and Cumberland ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Letters, iii. 438. Sir William Forbes says:—'He often put me in mind of an ancient Hero, and I remember Dr. Johnson was positive that he resembled Homer's character of Sarpedon.' Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, Appendix D. Mrs. Piozzi says:—'The Earl dressed in his robes at the coronation and Mrs. Siddons in the character of Murphy's Euphrasia were the noblest specimens of the human race I ever saw.' Synonymy, i.43. He sprang from a race of rebels. 'He united in his person,' says Forbes, 'the four earldoms of Errol, Kilmarnock, Linlithgow, and Callander.' The last two were attainted in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... with Tybalt, the despair of her closing scenes, bore down all opposition, silenced criticism, and excited her audience to an extraordinary degree. She appeared afterward, but not in London, as Hamlet, following an unfortunate example set by Mrs. Siddons; and as Ion in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... its blood! Anon the tear More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, Murder'd by cruel uncle's mandate fell: Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, Ev'n so, thou, Siddons, ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... he would not, in all probability, have risen to acknowledged eminence in his profession for many years, if he had not fallen under the observation of Mrs. Siddons. That extraordinary actress, little less illustrious for private virtues than splendid talents, being engaged one summer in the northern theatres, observed with pleasure and astonishment, a young man of abilities far above the crowd that played with him. To adopt her own ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... House to see the pictures. I best remember Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which everybody knows in engravings. We lunched in clerical company that day, at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with the Archbishop of York, the Reverend Mr. Haweis, and others as guests. I told A—— that she ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... love of good acting to prevail; and he made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay of the grand school of acting, and to invent or republish anecdotes of Mrs. Siddons. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... few to equal her. In that emergency no man could have shown himself her superior. Her look of still untranquillised terror, the intermittent flashes of anger in her eyes as she loudly denounced the ruffians who had carried off their carriage, was a piece of acting worthy of a Rachel or Siddons. He would have been a keen physiognomist who could have told that her emotions were counterfeit. Little dreamt the sympathising spectators that while being pushed out of the carriage she had contrived to whisper back to the man so rudely behaving: "Look under the cushions, querido! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... possible, and lost no time to make such overtures at once as could not well be refused. These included an engagement at a very handsome salary for her father; her own of course was liberal—when one considers how long Mrs. Siddons had appeared upon the stage before she got a firm footing on the London boards, one cannot but be astonished at the rise of this lady at one leap from the threshold to the top of her profession. It ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the position of woman so mournfully as she has done it for herself. Charlotte Bronte, Caroline Norton, and indeed the majority of intellectual women, from the beginning to the end of their lives, have touched us to sadness even in mirth, and the mournful memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, looking back upon years when she had been the chief intellectual joy of English society, could only deduce the hope, "that there might be some other world hereafter, where justice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the Davel Brae that lay between the schoolhouse and the main street. One evening just before dark, as we were running up the hill, one of the boys shouted, "A Dandy Doctor! A Dandy Doctor!" and we all fled pellmell back into the schoolhouse to the astonishment of Mungo Siddons, the teacher. I can remember to this day the amused look on the good dominie's face as he stared and tried to guess what had got into us, until one of the older boys breathlessly explained that there was an awful big Dandy Doctor on the Brae and we ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... skilful in compliments. When he painted his famous picture of Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" he put his name on the border of her garment. The actress went near the picture to examine it, and when she saw the name she smiled. The artist said: "I could not lose the opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... transcendent talent on the occasion of a benefit for this child of his adoption, which ever since has gone by the name of the Garrick Fund. In imitation of his noble example, funds had been established in several provincial theatres in England; but it remained for Mrs. Henry Siddons and Mr. William Murray to become the founders of the first Theatrical Fund in Scotland. (Cheers.) This Fund commenced under the most favourable auspices. It was liberally supported by the management, and highly patronized by the public. ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... between Lady Mabel, Sir Charles Moreton, and another gentleman, as to the merits of a new actress, a dramatic meteor, then briefly eminent on the London boards. The Honorable Mr. L——, who was a savant in the small sciences that cater to amusement, pronounced her the Siddons of the day; Lady Mabel called her a ranter, then, as if alarmed at her temerity, appealed as ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... is not a man who can be described. You may describe a Mrs. Siddons with a faultless profile, a great statesman or writer with what an old family servant of ours called "an iron countenance"; but it is impossible to describe the intelligence, the nervous energy, the versatility of expression which quick-coming, eager thoughts throw upon the human face. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was gone, and then he felt ashamed of himself for entertaining it a moment; and yet it was not altogether an unnatural one for him who knew her character so well. She was lying on the ground in an attitude which would have driven Siddons to despair; one white arm, down which her sleeve had fallen, pressed against her forehead, while the other clutched the ground; and her splendid black hair fallen down across her shoulders. Yet how could he say how much of all this wild despair was ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Meantime, whatever she did,—whether it were in display of her own matchless talents, or whether it were as one member of a general party,—nothing could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. Siddons. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... manner, the concentrated passion of expression, the strength of emphasis with which Lady Holberton spoke, would have done honor to a Siddons. The natural start of horror and amazement on my part, was also, no doubt, very expressive—for I was ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... The Lady, to whom these lines are addressed has been greatly noticed for the strong resemblance she bears to Mrs. Siddons.] ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... pays no idle compliments, pours out no fulsome or insidious eulogies, but he speaks of his rivals and his predecessors with the warm appreciation of one who had felt the full influence of their power, and who could never look on merit with an oblique eye. His worship of Mrs. Siddons, as unparalleled in her genius, was life-long, and his descriptions of her acting convey a more vivid idea of its peculiar qualities and matchless effect than any others we can remember to have read. Talma comes next in his regard as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... in regulating your tempo not to get your movement too fast. This is a common fault with amateur speakers. Mrs. Siddons rule was, "Take time." A hundred years ago there was used in medical circles a preparation known as "the shot gun remedy;" it was a mixture of about fifty different ingredients, and was given to the patient in the hope that at least one of them would prove efficacious! That ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the Belvidera of Barry and Garrick. Every situation seemed to be formed on purpose to call forth her great skill in awakening the passions. Mrs. Siddons has, in this part as well as many others, fixed the favor of the town in her behalf. This actress, like a resistless torrent, has borne down all before her. In person, just rising above the middle stature, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... evidence enough that no puerile or uncultivated taste is this which relishes the theatre. Goethe presiding over the playhouse at Weimar, Euripides and Sophocles writing tragedies, the greatest genius of the English language acting in his own productions at the Globe Theatre, people like Siddons and Kean and Cushman and Macready illustrating this art with the resources of their fine intellects and great attainments,—surely these need scarcely be mentioned, to relieve the drama from the reproach that some would put upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... used to find on entering our Theatres is wanting. This House is not fitted up with any taste. I thought the theatre at Rouen preferable. The famous Talma, the Kemble, acted in a Tragedy, & Mme. Petit, the Mrs. Siddons of Paris, performed. The former, I think, must have seen Kemble, as he resembles him both in person and style of acting, but I did not admire him so much. In his silent Acting, however, he was very great. Mme. Petit acted better than any tragic ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... to see it. Our family was perfectly liberal in all these matters. The first time I had ever been in a theatre I went with my father to see "Cymbeline." I had never neglected Shakespeare, and when our great tragedians, Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Kemble, came for a short time to act in Edinburgh, I could think of nothing else. They were both remarkably handsome, and, notwithstanding the Scotch prejudice, the theatre was crowded every night. It was a misfortune to me that my mother never would go into society ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... But not for her alone, we wish respect, Others appear more conscious of defect; To night, no Veteran Roscii you behold, In all the arts of scenic action old; No COOKE, no KEMBLE, can salute you here, No SIDDONS draw the sympathetic tear, To night, you thong to witness the debut, Of embryo actors to the drama new; Here then, our almost unfledg'd wings we try, Clip not our pinions, ere the birds can fly; Failing ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... for his benefit.' It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I have heard of people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. I would as soon try to entrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and common sense are required from all people; but one proud distinction is enough for any one individual to possess ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... novels, with musical dramas and melodramas, drew great houses. Miss O'Neill had just retired, but Ellen Tree was making a success, and Macready was already distinguished in his profession. Still the excellence and prestige of the stage had declined incontestably since the days of Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble. Edmund Kean, though he did much for tragedy, had a short time to do it in, and was not equal in his passion of genius to the sustained majesty of the sister ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Siddons, the great English tragedienne, called upon him in his chambers and the servant did not promptly bring her a chair, his quick wit made capital of the incident ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... downwards'; Jean Glover, a Scottish weaver's daughter, who 'married a strolling player and became the best singer and actor of his troop'; Joanna Baillie, whose tedious dramas thrilled our grandfathers; Mrs. Tighe, whose Psyche was very much admired by Keats in his youthful days; Frances Kemble, Mrs. Siddons's niece; poor L. E. L., whom Disraeli described as 'the personification of Brompton, pink satin dress, white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a la Sappho'; the two beautiful sisters, Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; Emily Bronte, whose poems are instinct ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hair; and we cannot describe the appearance of her noble and beautiful, yet ghastly and wasted features, agitated strongly by anxious hesitation, and conflicting thoughts, unless to those of our readers who have had the advantage of having seen our inimitable Siddons in such a character ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... son-in-law and later biographer, Mr. Lockhart, Sir Walter's daughters, Mrs. Lockhart and Miss Anne Scott. He says Mrs. Lockhart "is just the woman to have success in Paris, by her sweet, simple manners." He had a stately chat with Mrs. Siddons, and Sir James Mackintosh he called "the best talker I have ever seen; the only man I have yet met in England who appears to have any clear or definite notions of us." Rare indeed were these flash-lights of genius that Samuel Rogers charmed ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... gliding upward to green fields, and the black hull bearing down the prisoner to the Traitors' Gate. If I go up Holborn, I remember that where this traffic now thunders John Gerard tended his Physic Garden when Elizabeth was queen. I know where Sarah Siddons lived; and where William Blake died; and my curious wanderings are now so far extended, that when I turn to the great book of London I seldom find a tedious page. The places where people strove and suffered evoke before me the forms of men and women ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... own favorite fancy picture. Penelope Boothby and Angels' Heads are popular favorites which could not be omitted from any collection. In Lady Cockburn and Her Children, The Duchess of Devonshire and Her Child, and Pickaback we have typical groups of mothers and children. Mrs. Siddons stands apart as one of his most unique and remarkable productions. The other pictures add as much as possible to the variety of the collection, and show something of ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... I." The play went marvelously. I played first and last acts well. H. was magnificent. Ted saw play yesterday and says I don't "do Mrs. Siddons well." I know what he means. The last ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Fox, and had been the travelling companion of Lord Holland; had corresponded with Tom Moore, debated with Francis Jeffrey, and dined with Dr. Parr; had visited Melrose Abbey in the company of Sir Walter Scott, and criticized the acting of Mrs. Siddons; conversed with Napoleon in his seclusion at Elba, and ridden with the Duke of Wellington along the lines ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... is the task to please a barb'rous throng, It needs no Siddons' powers in Southern's song; But here an ancient nation, fam'd afar, For genius, learning high, as great in war. Hail, Caledonia, name for ever dear! Before whose sons I'm honour'd ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... visit from the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. He gives this account of it in one of his letters ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Gadarene swine, the widow who put her mite in the poor-box, Mr. Horatio Bottomley, Shakespear, Mr. Jack Johnson, Sir Isaac Newton, Palestrina, Offenbach, Sir Thomas Lipton, Mr. Paul Cinquevalli, your family doctor, Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Siddons, your charwoman, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the common hangman." Or "The late Mr. Barney Barnato received as his lawful income three thousand times as much money as an English agricultural laborer ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... know that all this company were, before the wine went round, unmistakably pale, and had horror-stricken faces. Next morning, Harness (Fields knows—Rev. William—did an edition of Shakespeare—old friend of the Kembles and Mrs. Siddons), writing to me about it, and saying it was "a most amazing and terrific thing," added, "but I am bound to tell you that I had an almost irresistible impulse upon me to scream, and that, if any one had cried out, I am certain I should have followed." He had no idea that on the night ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Upper Terraces just behind are full of charming residences. In the former Constable lived at intervals (No. 2) during 1821, and to the latter Mrs. Siddons came in the autumn of 1804. In Montague ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... celebration of a great national event is given in the Times, Nov. 7, 1805, in which is recorded the official account of the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson. At Covent Garden, where both the Kembles were then playing together with Mrs. Siddons, a "hasty but elegant compliment to the memory of Lord Nelson" was presented. It "consisted of columns in the foreground decorated with medallions of the naval heroes of Britain. In the distance a number of ships were ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... years afterwards, Johnson described this evening. Miss Monckton had told him that he must see Mrs. Siddons. 'Well, Madam,' he answered, 'if you desire it, I will go. See her I shall not, nor hear her; but I'll go, and that will do. The last time I was at a play, I was ordered there by Mrs. Abington, or Mrs. Somebody, I do not well remember who; but I placed myself in the middle of the first row of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and hoped: "Maybe some day we can get a little house out of town, and then you can garden.... Sorry old Siddons is laid off again.... Is the ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was for cutting his new acquaintance. Then hesitated, and raised his hat with a jerk as if to Mrs. Frobisher. Neither lady acknowledged his salute, which may possibly have been a little unexpected. Then young Siddons dropped his hymn-book; stooped to pick it up, and Lewisham almost fell over him.... He entered church in ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... strollers of old, or 'vagabonds', as the great and mighty Junius, from his lofty plane, termed them. The story of that period of 'vagrant' life adds one more chapter to the annals of strolling players which already include such names as Kemble, Siddons ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with both Garrick and his wife; and his death, in 1779, saddened and softened his great worshipper. After his death she never was present at any theatrical amusement. She would not go to the theatre to witness the acting of her own dramas; not even to see Mrs. Siddons, when she appeared as so brilliant a star. In fact, after Garrick's death Miss More partially abandoned fashionable society, having acquired a disgust of its heartless frivolities and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... include plays unproduced; in this no one is infallible) and his feeling for it amounted to a sixth sense. There was something uncanny about the way he could talk about Lottie, for example, as if he had seen her; or Mrs. Siddons; or Mrs. Fiske when she was Minnie Maddern, the soubrette. It was as though he had the power to cast himself back into the past. No doubt it was that power which gave later to his group of historical plays (written by him between the ages of thirty and thirty-five) ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... striking, with its quaint thirteenth century furniture, bronzes, and Venetian ware. There are some fine engravings of Miss Brunton—who became Countess of Craven—Kemble, Garrick, Phelps, and Mrs. Siddons. A picture of Mrs. Kendal in "The Falcon" was done at the express wish of, and paid for by, the late Poet Laureate. Tennyson said it reminded him of a woman he liked and admired. In the shadow is a fine ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in Gillray's political caricatures; but perhaps he was never more happily treated than when he enters as Harlequin, armed with a goose quill, and assisted by John Kemble and the famous Mrs. Siddons, in "Blowing up the Pic Nics." To the same class and subject of satire belongs the "Pic Nic Orchestra" and "Dilettante Theatre"—this last a Green-room scene which seems reminiscent of Hogarth's print of a similar subject. "Two-penny Whist" and "Push-pin" are filled with contemporary ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... arrived one reeled and flounced into one's seat by such athletics as one uses in a Bermuda steamer (or did use in the old fifteen-hundred-ton kind) crossing the Gulf Stream. When once comparatively secure in one's chair, the combat with the lunch began. Mrs. Siddons would have been at home there, for there was nothing for it but to stab the potatoes, and all one's cunning of fence was needed to hold one's own with the chops. But how delicious they were! How the first mealed and the last melted in the mouth; and the tea, when once ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... He then came forward in a very different state to receive ordination, and was through his whole life a most zealous and devoted man, a friend of Milner and Wilberforce. An old lady, Mrs. Logan of Seafield, told me that once when Mrs. Siddons was acting, uncle William walked twenty miles to see her and persuade her not to go, and, whether by arguments or eloquence, he succeeded. Though kind and gentle he was a strong Calvinist, and by his zeal and energy in preaching such doctrines, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... for the moment imagine Mrs. Siddons to have been the veritable Lady Macbeth, and acknowledge that never was man more powerfully tempted into evil, nor more deeply punished with his fall from Virtue, than this, the Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor. My concernment in this Essay is neither with his virtue, nor his fall. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Siddons could not have put more passion into a single syllable,—'What! Not have it? Who says so?' And she sat opposite to her husband, with her elbows on the table, her hands clasped together, and her coarse, solid, but once handsome face stretched over it ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... called. And, while on this subject, we may as well bring up the following specimen of this species of advertising. It was written by Peter Seguin, on the occasion of the first appearance in Dublin of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. It caused much merriment at the time among some, while in others, who could not relish a joke, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... departure I called in Harley Street for Arthur Rushton, with whom I had engaged to go this evening to the theatre to witness Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth, which neither of us had yet seen. I found him in a state of calmed excitement, if I may so express myself; and after listening with much interest to the minute account he gave me of what had passed, I, young and inexperienced as I was in ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and no less frequently that of the charming actress, Mrs. Abington, who was also noted for her bel esprit, and was evidently a favorite with the great painter. There are two or three pictures of Mrs. Siddons by his hand, and many of the beautiful Maria Countess Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, a lock of whose "delicate golden-brown" hair was found by Mr. Taylor in a side-pocket of one of Sir Joshua's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Miss Berry, April 3.-On her fall down a bank at Pisa. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Damer's reception at Elvas. Death of Dr. Price. Outrageous violence of the National Assembly. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... undertakings of Rees' "Cyclopaedia" and Wilson's "Ornithology" entered upon. The monthly expense of printing the Columbian was said to be L100, which was paid to mechanics and manufacturers of the United States. The magazine was inaugurated by Matthew Carey, T. Siddons, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the Muse has seen, And sung, could make these avenues more clean; Could stop one slander ere it found its way, And give to public scorn its helpless prey. By the same aid, the Stage invites her friends, And kindly tells the banquet she intends; Thither from real life the many run, With Siddons weep, or laugh with Abingdon; Pleased in fictitious joy or grief, to see The mimic passion with their own agree; To steal a few enchanted hours away From self, and drop the curtain on the day. But who can steal from self that wretched wight Whose darling work is tried some fatal ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe |
