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192
MRS. SIDDONS.

Twiss in 1827. Mrs. Siddons ever kept up the most affectionate intercourse with them, and their son Horace Twiss was her favourite nephew.

Her next sister, Elizabeth, though apprenticed to a mantua-maker, was soon bitten with the dramatic enthusiasm of the family. She obtained an engagement through the influence of her famous sister, but made no way in London; and after her marriage with Mr. Whitelock, one of the managers of the Chester company, in 1785, she went with him to America, where she seems to have had some success.

Mrs. Whitelock, we are told, was a taller and fairer woman than Mrs. Siddons. When she returned to England years later, she wore an auburn wig, which, like the tall cap that surmounted it, was always on one side. She was a simple-hearted, sweet-tempered woman, but very imperfectly educated. Her Kemble name, face, figure, and voice helped her in the United States, but her own qualifications were but meagre. Nothing could be droller, we are told, than to see her with Mrs. Siddons, of whom she looked like a clumsy, badly-finished imitation. Her vehement gestures and violent objurgations contrasted comically with her sister's majestic stillness of manner; and when occasionally Mrs. Siddons would interrupt her with "Elizabeth, your wig is on one side," and the other replied, "Oh, is it?" and, giving the offending head-gear a shove, put it quite as crooked in the other direction, and proceeded with her discourse, Melpomene herself used to have recourse to her snuff-box to hide the dawning smile on her face.

Another sister, Jane, appeared in Lady Randolph at Newcastle when she was nineteen. She had all the Kemble faults in acting carried to excess. She was,