Weekly Trinity journal. [volume] (Weaverville, Calif.) 1857-1972, 1868-03-14
Mrs. siddon's Farewell Triumph.

She chose for her final play Macbeth; the
Thames dark and dangerous wife being one of
her greatest triumphs although pay-goers as
serted that Mrs. Pritchard had more dignity and
more compass strength and melody of voice.
In the sleeping scene the older critics claimed
Tor Mrs. Pri,chard sghs of deeper agony, and
voice more sleepy and more articulate. Yet was
her acting divine. She moved like a prophecies;
her beautiful face the interpreter OF noble
mind. She moved like a queen, and spoke like
Pythoness. As Hezlitt says finely: :" The en-
thusiasm she excited had something idolatrous
about it. We Can conceive nothing grander.
She embodied, to our imagination, the fables of
mythology OF the heroic and deifed mortals of
elder time. She not less than goddess or
than a prophecies inspired by the gods. Power
was seated on her brow; passion radiated from
her breast as from shrine She tragedy
personifed" The public gazing for the
last time on her who as Campbell said, had
g increased the hearts capacity for tender, in
tense, and lofty feelings"
On the farewell night the old inspiration
seemed to have returned. She was supernatural
from the moment she instilled into the chief
tans ear the first poisonous thought of evil till
the time when, mere wreck of remorse and dis
appointed ambition miserable queen, she
moved. like phantom of the night, mutterng
fragments of her dreams, all pervaded by the
one racking thought. Her eyes were open, but
they were consci usless and blank. The soul
was absent, and in o.tu-e. When she rubbed her
thin hite hands in horrible remem mbrance of the
blood that had once bathed them, the house
shuddered with ague fit of horror and of pity.
AT the close of this scene the applause was fran
tic and ungoverrable Many persons stood upon
the benches, and, dreading an antl-cllmax,
shouted requests that the performance might
close when Mrs. Siddons left the stage. An
actor then came forward and at once promised
curtain dropped for twenty minutes, then
rose, and discovered Mrs. Sddons, dressed sim
ply in white, sltiing at table. She came for
ward, through a tornado of applause, which pre-
vented her speaking for some time. When the
lul spread, she moved forward in her own
queenly way, and delivered an address, written
Tor her by her nephew, Horace Twiss. Towards
the end, Mrs. Sddons became much agiated,
and when, after some pauses, it ended, kemble,
in his grand Roman way, came and led his sister
from the stage, amid whirlwinds of applause.
Poor Mrs. Siddons She had had a grand ca
reer of almost unalloyed triumph but still
lumny had often stung her. The misdoings of a
bad sister, who had read lectures at DR. Graham's
quack Temple of Health, and afterward tried TO
poison herself at Westminster Abbey, were all
laid at her door. She was also accused of a
mean thrift, and of allowing her old father to be-
come a petitioner for aims. These ISLANDERS
were, have every reason to believe utterly
untrue. Mrs. Siddons, to judge from her letters,
and the accounts of her intimate friends, seems
to have been high-minded, prudent, self-re-
specting woman, unin1ated by her extraordi-
nary fame, and the high society into which it
had led her. After gala days at countesses'
where lords and ladies elbowed each other and
stood on chairs in their anxiety to see her, she
returned, calm, digniied, and contented, to her
quiet home in Cover street. 1t might have
turned the wisest womans head to have
Reynolds painting his name on the hem of her
garment the Tragic Muse, and DR.. johnson
calling her '' a glorious woman -prodigiously
fine woman, who, on the stage was adorned by
nature and gorifed with art.
AS the sun has spots, so there are certain
deductions, however, to be made from even such
a fame that of the Siddons. Mrs. Crawford
equaled her in Lady Randolph Mrs. Cibber
rivaled her in cara. She did little as Juliet.
She spoiled Rosalind by prudish scrupIes about
the pretty fantastic male dress necessary to the
part. Mrs. Jordan was far more charming in
that charming character. Mrs. Cibber surpassed
the Siddons Ophelia. In love she was too
solemn. in comedy too heavy. Her Lady Town
ley wanted airiness her Lady in 'iComus,' her
Katherine, Portia, and Cleone were by no means
successes. The Siddons face, though grdndy
grave and Grecian, was rather too Jewish and
prononcie in the nose and chin the action of her
arms dissatisfied even to the last hypercrica
men with difficult taste, like Horace WalpoIe
| In domestic life she retained a certain stiff
tragic manner, which had become habitual with
her, as with her brother, John Philip. She stab
bed the potatoes at dinner, and said regally and
metrically to the servants 81 asked for water
and you gave me beer" But great genius left
the stage when the dark green curtain fell for
the last time on the majestic figure and face of
Sarah Siddnns