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Untitled Article
and so , many years afterwards , would Mrs . Siddons herself . By properly disposing all the circumstances we might rear a tree which should perfectly correspond with a previous picture , even to the tip of every leaf . We are yet far from the requisite knowledge and power ; we can only ensure a few broad and general
effects ; and this is pretty nearly our condition as to the human plant . Even a simple negative result is often beyond us , as it was in the instance of the Kembles . Few of the succeeding generation would regret that parental anxiety had failed of extinguishing a whole theatrical constellation , to manufacture from the materials some indifferent sempstresses , schoolmistresses , lawyers , merchants , pr catholic priests .
Mrs . Siddons was born at Brecon , in North Wales , on the 5 th July , 1755 . Of the very scanty memorials of her early youth the following anecdote is the most interesting . Mr . Campbell gives it on her own ( oral ) authority as an illustration of ' her confidence in the efficacy of prayer , or rather of the prayer-book /
* One day her mother had promised to take her out the following , to a pleasure party in the neighbourhood , and she was to wear a new pink dress which became her exceedingly . But whether the party was to hold , and the pink apparel to be worn , was to depend on the
weather of to-morrow morning . On going to bed she took with her her prayer-book , opened , as she supposed , at the prayer for fine weather , and she fell asleep with the book folded in her little arms . At day-break she found that she had been holding the prayer for rain to her breast , and that the rain , as if Heaven had taken her at her word .
was pelting at the windows . But she went to bed again with the book opened at the right place , and she found the mistake quite remedied , for the morning was ae pink and beautiful as the dress she was to wear . ' —Vol . i . pp . 35 , 36 . The double coincidence was really remarkable . We may not improbably ascribe to it some influence in the production of that
respect for religion which Mrs . Siddons always felt . Another such occurrence , and the whole colour of her destiny might have heen changed . She might have become a female Wesley , appealing to her personal experience of preternatural interferenoe . Kembletonian , or Siddonian , would have been a sounding name
for a sect . The tale is pleasanter than many of the interpositions in the records of modern superstition ; nor is their dark fanaticism half so credible as that the elements should go out of their way , and the heavens smile , to prevent a child ' s being disappointed of her promised enjoyment .
Mr . Siddons was an actor in Roger Kemble ' s company , and might not unreasonably make pretensions to the manager ' s daughter , who was then only seventeen , seeing that he was hand some , active , and of talent so versatile , that 'his range of-charaeten extended from Hamlet to Harlequin . ' The Kemblem , how * * ver > were as cantankerous as tfaa Caxmtets ; tmkj it was Jttli * t
Untitled Article
CampbdVs Life ef Mrs . Sid&ms . 580
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 539, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/9/
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