in it at night, that my shame and confusion cured me of procrastinating my business for the remainder of my life."
People afterwards were inclined to find her formal and sententious, and even denied her sensibility off the stage; but it is impossible to read the account of the manner in which she entered into her parts, and how they took hold of her in her early days of work, without feeling that she had depths of pathos and sympathy in her disposition undreamt of by those who met her later when, under a dignified tragic manner, she had hidden her youthful spontaneity of feeling. We have only need of the evidence of the actors she acted with to see how deeply she entered into her part.
Miss Kelly said that when, as Constance, Mrs. Siddons wept over her, her collar was wet with her tears. Tom Davies is said to have declared that in the third act of the Fair Penitent she "turned pale under her rouge." She tells us herself that "when called upon to personate the character of Constance, I never, from the beginning of the play to the end of my part in it, once suffered my dressing-room door to be closed, in order that my attention might be constantly fixed on those distressing events which, by this means, I could plainly hear going on upon the stage, the terrible effects of which progress were to be represented by me. Moreover, I never omitted to place myself, with Arthur in my hand, to hear the march, when, upon the reconciliation of England and France, they enter the gates of Angiers to ratify the contract of marriage between the Dauphin and the Lady Blanche, because the sickening sounds of that march would usually cause the bitter tears of rage, disappointment, betrayed confidence, baffled ambition, and, above all, the
