Sarah Siddons

But better days presently followed.

First acquaintance of Mrs. Inchbald with Mrs. Siddons grew to a strong friendship, and this extended to the other members of the Campbell family.

After seven years of happy but childless marriage, Mrs. Inchbald was left a widow at the age of 26.

In after years, when devoting herself to the baby of one of her landladies, she wrote to a friend, I shall never again have patience with a mother who complains of anything but the loss of her children.

But Mrs. Barbold's turn was on the whole more for domestic than for literary life, although literary people always seem to have had a great interest for her.

During one Christmas which they spent in London, the worthy couple go to see Mrs. Siddons, and Mrs. Chapone introduces Mrs. Barbold to Miss Burney.

A very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young lady, says Mrs. Barbold, who is always kind in her descriptions.

Mrs. Barbold's one complaint in London is of the fatigue from hairdressers and the bewildering hurry of the great city, where she had, notwithstanding her quiet country life, many ties and friendships and acquaintances.

After a most delightful ride through some of the richest country I ever beheld, we arrived about one o'clock at the philosopher's house.

We found him with his hair bien poudré and in a pair of new, sharp-toed red morocco slippers, not to mention his green coat and crimson under waistcoat.

From Godwin's by the city, they come to Marlborough Street and find Mrs. Siddons nursing her little baby and as handsome and charming as ever.

They see Charles Kemble there, and they wind up their day by calling on Mrs. Inchbald in her pleasant lodgings with £200 just come in from Sheridan for a farce of 60 pages.

But Mrs. Barbould's turn was on the whole more for domestic than for literary life, although literary people always seem to have had a great interest for her.

During one Christmas which they spent in London, the worthy couple go to see Mrs. Siddons, and Mrs. Chapone introduces Mrs. Barbould to Miss Burney.

A very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young lady, says Mrs. Barbould, who is always kind in her descriptions.

Mrs. Barbauld's one complaint in London is of the fatigue from hairdressers and the bewildering hurry of the great city, where she had, notwithstanding her quiet country life, many ties and friendships and acquaintances.

Hampstead was no further from London in those days than it is now, and they seem to have kept up a constant communication with their friends and relations in the great city.

They go to the play occasionally.

I have not, indeed, seen Mrs. Siddons often, but I think I never saw her to more advantage, she writes.

It is not, however, seen a play.

With regard to such women, there has never seemed to be any doubt in the verdict of mankind that they ought to follow their nature and that their particular sphere was the one to which they are called.

Did anybody ever think that Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Kimball and Ristori had better have applied themselves assiduously to keeping house because they were women and woman's noblest station is retreat? The world has always shown a fair average of good sense in this matter, from the days of the fair Hypatia in Alexandria, who, we are told, gave lectures on philosophy behind a curtain lest her charms should distract the attention of two impressible young men, down to those of Anna Dickinson.

Mankind are not, after all, quite fools, and seem in these cases to have a reasonable idea that exceptional talents have exceptional laws and make their own code of priorities.

Now, there is no doubt that Miss Dickinson, though as relating to her femininity she is quite as pretty and modest a young woman as any to be found in the most sheltered circle, has yet the most exceptional talent for public speaking, which draws crowds to hear her and makes lecturing for her a lucrative profession, as well as a means of advocating just and generous sentiments and of stimulating her own sex to nobler purposes, and the same law which relates to Siddons and Kimball and Ristori relates also to her.

But she overcomes that.

And in a way, I wanted to show the gritty side of it for Byron or for Mary Shelley or for Elizabeth Fry or for Sarah Siddons or any of the other people because they overcame sometimes very significant challenges to write and think

and

behave

Wilberforce has time in Bath.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge spends time in Bath.

Sarah Siddons, one of the greatest.

Female actors in British history spends significant amounts of time in Bath.

It's a very emotional play anyway, but she brings to it this extra thing, which is that she's acting alongside her own son.

And so there is this... blending of the real person real mother the real the woman emoting with her real child and then of course the character and so what she does that's very very smart is she makes motherhood her thing so Sarah Siddons or Siddons is this really interesting test case in the late 1700s who finds a gimmick and runs with it.

And she ends up becoming the greatest actress of her age.

She is sort of very stately.