Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843. Various
may be presumed that I saw this extraordinary being whenever it was possible. But her chef-d'œuvre, in my eyes, was the "wife of Macbeth." The character seemed made for her, by something of that instinct which in olden times combined the poet and the prophet in one. It had the ardour and boldness mingled with the solemnity and mystery that belonged to the character of her beauty.
Her entrance was hurried, as if she had but just glanced over the letter, and had been eager to escape from the crowd of attendants to reperuse it alone. She then read on, in a strong calm voice, until she came to the passage which proved the preternatural character of the prediction. "They have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt with desire to question them further, they made themselves into air and—vanished." As she was about to pronounce the last word, she paused, drew a short breath, her whole frame was disturbed, she threw her fine eyes upwards, and exclaimed "Vanished!" with a wild force, which showed that the whole spirit of the temptation had shrunk into her soul. The "Hail, king that shall be!" was the winding-up of the spell. It was pronounced with the grandeur of one already by anticipation a Queen.
Her solitary summons to her distant lord followed, like an invocation—
"Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round."
The murder scene was the next triumph: her acting was that of a triumphant fiend. I must follow these recollections no further; but the most admirable piece of dumb show that perhaps ever was conceived, was her "Banquet scene." That scene, from the terrible business on the stage—the entrance of Banquo's ghost, the horrors of Macbeth, stricken in the moment of his royal exultation, and the astonishment and alarm of the courtiers—is one of the most thrilling and tumultuous. Yet Siddons, sitting at the extremity of the royal hall, not having a syllable to utter, and simply occupied with courtesies to her guests, made her silence so expressive, that she more than divided the interest with the powerful action going on in front. And when at last, indignant at Macbeth's terrors, stung by conscience, and alarmed at the result of an up-breaking of the banquet with such rumours in their lips, she rushed towards her unhappy husband, and burst out with the words, still though but whispered, yet intensely poured into his passive ear—
"Are you a man?
This is the very painting of your fear!
This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,
Led you to Duncan!—
Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
You look but on a stool!"
In those accents all else was forgotten.
But her sleep-walking scene! When shall we see its "second or its similar?" Nothing so solemn, nothing so awful, was ever seen upon the stage. Yet it had one fault—it was too awful. She more resembled a majestic shade rising from the tomb than a living woman, however disturbed by wild fear and lofty passion. It is a remarkable instance of the genius of Shakspeare, that he here found the means of giving a human interest to a being whom he had almost exalted to the "bad eminence" of a magnificent fiend. In this famous soliloquy, the thoughts which once filled and fired her have totally vanished. Ambition has died; remorse lives in its place. The diadem has disappeared; she thinks only of the blood that stains her for ever. She is the queen no more, but an exhausted and unhappy woman, worn down by the stings of conscience, and with her frame dying by the disease of her soul.
But Siddons wanted the agitation, the drooping, the timidity. She looked a living statue. She spoke with the solemn tone of a voice from a shrine. She stood more the sepulchral avenger of regicide than the sufferer from its convictions. Her grand voice, her fixed and marble countenance, and her silent step, gave the impression of a supernatural being, the genius of an ancient oracle—a tremendous Nemesis.
I have seen all the great tragedians of my day, but I have never seen an equal to the sublime of this extraordinary actress. I have seen beauty, youth, touching sensibility, and powerful conception; but I never saw so complete an union of them all—and that union was the sublime. Shakspeare must have had some such form before his mind's eye, while he was creating the wife of Macbeth. Some magnificent and regal countenance, some movement of native majesty, some imaginary Siddons. He could not have gone beyond the true. She was a living Melpomene.
The business of the War-Office was not transacted in those days with the dispatch subsequently introduced by the honest Duke of York. After a delay of weeks I found myself still ungazetted, grew sad, angry, impatient; and after some consideration on the various modes of getting rid of ennui, which were to be found in enlisting the service of that Great Company which extended its wings from Bombay to Bengal, as Sheridan said, impudently enough, like the vulture covering his prey; or in taking the chance of fortune, in the shape of cabin-boy on board one of the thousand ships that were daily floating down the Thames, making their way to the extremities of the earth; or in finishing my feverish speculations in a cold bath at the bottom of the Thames itself; I did what I felt a severer exertion than any of them—I wrote a full and true statement of my vexations to my lordly brother.
His answer was lordly enough. He had been "so much occupied with the numberless duties devolving upon him as landlord, magistrate, lord-lieutenant, and fifty other things, that he absolutely had not been able to find a moment to think of me;" and what was rather more perplexing to my immediate sensibilities, "he had not been able to send me a shilling. However, he did all that he could, and gave me a note to a particular friend," Mr Elisha Mordecai of Moorfields.
There is nothing which quickens a man's movements like a depletion of the purse; and instead of lounging at my hotel until the morning paper brought me the scandals and pleasantries of the day before fresh for my breakfast-table, I threw myself out of bed at an hour which I should not have ventured to mention to any man with whom I walked arm-in-arm during the day, and made my way in a hackney coach, to avoid the possibility of being recognised, to the dwelling of my new patron, or rather my guide and guardian angel.
I make no attempt to describe the navigation through which I reached him; it was winding, dark, and dirty beyond all description, and gave the idea of the passages of a dungeon rather than any thing else that I could name. And in a hovel worthy to finish such a voyage of discovery, I discovered Mr Elisha Mordecai, the man of untold opulence. For a while, on being ushered into the office, where he sat pen in hand, I was utterly unable to ascertain any thing of him beyond a gaunt thin figure, who sat crouching behind a pile of papers, and beneath a small window covered with the dirt of ages. He gave me the impression in his dungeon of one of those toads which are found from time to time in blocks of coal, and have lain there unbreathing and unmoving since the deluge. However, he was a man of business, and so was I for the moment. I handed him my brother's note; and like a ray of sunshine on the torpid snake, it put him into immediate motion. He now took off his spectacles, as if to indulge himself with a view of me by the naked eye; and after a scrutinizing look, which, in another place and person, I should probably have resented as impertinent, but which here seemed part of his profession, he rose from his seat and ushered me into another apartment. This room was probably his place of reception for criminals of a more exalted order; for it was lined with foreign prints, had one or two tolerable Dutch pictures, and a bookcase. Out of his bookcase he took down a folio, examined it, compared the writing of my credentials with the signatures of a book which, as Cromwell's son said of his trunk, contained the lives and fortunes, or at least that on which depended the lives and fortunes, of half the noble roués of England, their "promises to pay," bonds, mortgages, and post-obits, and then performed the operation on myself. My L.2500 in prospect was mulcted of a fifth for the trouble of realizing it; of another fifth for prompt payment, and of another for expediting the affair of my commission. "Another such victory would have ruined me."
However, I bore the torture well. In truth, I had so little regard for any object but the grand one of wearing a sword and epaulette, that if Mordecai had demanded the whole sum in fifths, I should have scarcely winced. But my philosophy stood me in good part, for it won a grim smile from the torturer, and even a little of his confidence.
"This," said