Tea at Trianon: Sarah Siddons

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Sarah Siddons

The life of an actress.

Sarah Siddons was a renowned tragic actress of the 18th century. She was born on 5th July 1755, in a room above a small tavern in High Street in Brecon (Brecknockshire, Wales) into a theatrical family. Her father was Roger Kemble, the manager of the touring theatre company the Warwickshire Company of Comedians, and her mother was the actress Sarah Ward, daughter of the comedian John Ward. Five of their children (they had 12 in total; Sarah was the oldest) and several grandchildren all became famous actors. Sarah was the most famous of them all. Acting was in her blood and, from an early age, she appeared on the stage in her father's shows.

Sarah bloomed into a beautiful young woman and, at 15, caught the eye of a member of her father's troop, a certain William Siddons. Her parents weren't happy at this match and decided to take Sarah off the stage and send her to work as a lady's-maid to Lady Greathead, of Guy's Cliff (near Warwick) for £10 a year, hoping the couple would fall out of love. Two years passed before her parents realised how deeply her daughter and William cared about each other and finally consented to their union. In 1773, the couple tied the knot. They had seven children, but only two of them survived childhood, and the marriage eventually ended in a formal separation. (Read entire post.)