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Untitled Article
me to the other world . ' We pass over these to conclude with a few words on two topics which remain . Mr . Campbell adverts to certain f allusions to the alleged infelicity of Mrs . Siddons as a married woman / and inserts the following letter to her husband in refutation of them : — *• December 16 , 1804 .
c dear Sir , —I am really sorry that my littl ' e flash of merriment should have been taken so seriously , for I am sure , however we may differ in trifles , we can never cease to love each other . You wish me to say what I expect to have done . I can expect nothing more than you yourself have designed me in your will . Be ( as you ought to be ) the
master of all while God permits ; but , in case of your death , only let me be put out of the power of any person living . This is all that I desire ; and 1 think that you cannot but be convinced that it is reasonable and proper , ( Your ever affectionate and faithful
• s . s : In spite of Mr Campbell ' s italics , we could not read this letter without feeling the purpose for which he introduces it absorbed in a far more important and extensive consideration . Whence came the property which Mrs . Siddons deferentially and humbly requests Mr . Siddons not so tQ bequeath as to subject her to the control of others at the close of her laborious life ? We know
nothing of the matter but what the book tells us ; and from that it does not appear that Mr . Siddons could possibly be possessed of one single farthing for which he was not indebted to Mrs . Siddons . From their marriage to their removal to London , it is true that he was employed * as an actor ; but the inference is not very unsafe that he earned no more than his portion of the family expenditure . After that time he did nothing , but go to Bath , or
take his wife to Ramsgate , when she would rather have remained in London ; and we chiefly hear , at one time , of his being full of anecdote , and at another , of his being full of rheumatism . So far ' as the information goes , Mrs . Siddons was the bee ; a queenbee she was ; and Mr . Siddons was the drone , but of whom she had to beg the legacy of an independent morsel of honey . Truly the hive has strange laws and customs . ~ Here is a woman of
magnificent endowments , exerting her extraordinary powers with extraordinary success , and a mere pensioned idler is the lord of all her earnings , simply because he is a man and she is a woman . Work the Tiresian miracle upon both , and then see how the case stands . Suppose Mr . Siddons winning the laurels and the money ,
and then having to beg of Mrs . Siddons not to exercise her sovereign right over it , by leaving him in ' the power of any person / This would not do any where , except at Travancore , where perhaps it might come in the course of nature . The supposition is absurd and monstrous ; and so is the fact . Quite enough i * woman debarred from the opportunity of honourably earning her
Untitled Article
548 Campbell ' * Life of Mr * . Siddoni .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 548, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/18/
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