Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/55

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"DAVEY."
43

before time had been given her to spoil, his term as manager would have ceased. Garrick had never been given much cause to think highly of women during his long life as an actor—his own wife always excepted—and he most likely put Sarah Siddons on the same level as the others—sordid, like Miss Pope; jealous, like Mrs. Yates; or ill-tempered, like Mrs. Clive—well able to take care of herself, and not gifted with those two rare qualities amongst theatrical ladies, modesty or sensitiveness. How could he guess, even with all his perspicacity and experience, that this young creature—whose life hitherto had been spent strolling from place to place with the vagabonds and adventurers her profession threw her with—was proud, sensitive, timid, nourishing the very highest ideal of her art, and indifferent to any homage given to her person and not to her intellectual power of interpreting the works of the great poets of her country? How could he tell that beneath the pretty exterior of this young and trembling recruit lay hidden the fiery soul of the majestic, terrific Lady Macbeth? He treated her with an amount of consideration and courtesy unusual even with him, sending her boxes for all his great performances, when Cabinet Ministers were imploring places and had to be refused. He would hand her from the green-room and put her in the place of honour beside him; and gave her parts which according to his judgment, formed hastily on what he had had an opportunity of seeing, best suited her. And how was he rewarded? By a resentment nourished the whole of a lifetime, and by a charge persistently stated and repeated by her friends, that the great "Roscius" was jealous of an unskilled, untrained, country actress! Why, then, had he not shown jealousy