THIS correspondence takes us to the heart of a typical

domestic episode of eighteenth-century life in England. It is like a bit of Richardson condensed, not by an officious modern editor, but by the stress and strain of actual life. The principal actors and actresses in the drama tell their own story—the story of their hearts and their conflicting passions—in the flowing prose of the day. Reason, senti- ment, duty, affection, and self-respect inspire the page when Mrs. Siddons and her daughters, and their voluble friend Mrs. Pennington, hold the pen. But when Lawrence writes the tone changes, and we have an outpouring of romantic exaggerations, sentimental, bombastic, mock-heroic, or in- solent according to the mood of the moment, or, as some- times appears with very disagreeable plainness, according to what the writer perceives may be wrung out of the oppor- tunity by an adroit theatrical volte-face.

The outline of the story is known already to the world. It was told in Fanny Kemble's Records of a Girlhood ; but, as the editor of the present volume remarks, "even she, who, as the daughter of Charles Kemble, and therefore the cousin of the unfortunate girls, had the best opportunity of learning the facts, was clearly in error in several particulars." The principal point upon which, according to Mr. Knapp's reading of the comi-tragedy, Fanny Kemble went wrong was the pre- cise nature and degree of the original relation of Lawrence to Sally Siddons. Fanny Kemble believed, as others have believed, that Lawrence was in the beginning actually engaged to Sally. He certainly was in love with her first, she being in the early stages of his friendship with the family the more attractive of the two sisters. Maria was at this time hardly more than a child, while Sally was in the full bloom of young womanhood, and, in the words of Mrs. Piozzi, "just as pretty as every pretty girl of the same age, and prettier • An Artist's Loss-Story. Told in the Letters of Sir Thqmas Lawrence, Mrs. Siddons and her Daughters. Edited by Oswald G. Knapp, M.A. With POrtraits ancl Facsimiles. London George Allen [12s. 01]

and attentions of Lawrence were transferred from the elder sister to the younger. That he had courted Sally assiduously, and that Sally returned his affections and considered his intentions serious, Mr. Knapp does not dispute. He only questions the possibility of an engagement, and this chiefly on the ground that had Lawrence formally proposed to Miss Siddons and been accepted by her, the girl's father must have been informed of the affair, whereas there is no evidence of

such knowledge on the part of Mr. Siddons. It is true that there is no evidence of such knowledge on Mr. Siddons's part, but then it is also true that later on, when Lawrence, after being for some weeks engaged to Maria, made a sudden return to Sally, Mr. Siddons was kept in the dark. Indeed, the one sign of weakness and of a certain kind of silliness

given throughout the affair by Mrs. Siddons is her determina- tion to keep the complication hidden from her husband and her brother, for which the excuse and the explanation lie obviously in the extraordinary charm of Lawrence himself. "This disturber," as he is called in one letter, had the gifts of person and address, which succeed in retaining the faith and admiration of even intimate friends long after all right to them has been forfeited. Another reason given for doubting the existence of a definite engagement between Lawrence and Sally is the silence of Sally herself on the subject. But this is very delicate ground to build on. The character of Sally is revealed at every point of the story as an almost ideally perfect combination of heroic dignity and self-control with rare tenderness and unselfishness. If there was any engage- ment between her and Lawrence, it would certainly have been a secret one, for the young painter, though rising rapidly in fame and fashion, had heavy debts and extravagant habits, and he was not favourably regarded by Mr. Siddons. Quite

probably Sally did not take her younger sister into her con. fidence. Possibly Maria did not even realise that Sally eared

for Lawrence, for their characters were different, and it was as natural to the elder sister to be reticent as it was at this stage to the younger to show her feelings. In any case, Sally had the kind of pride and the kind of unselfishness which made it a matter of course to stand aside quietly when she saw that her lover's allegiance was growing slack and that Maria's affections were deeply committed.

The new light shed upon the story comes from two sets of letters now first published: a correspondence between the two Siddons girls—Sally and Maria—and a Miss Bird, a young girl who was the friend of both sisters, and, moreover, intimate with the family of Lawrence ; and another corre- spondence between Mrs. Siddons and Sally and Mrs. Pen- nington, a lively lady of literary distinction, whose husband was the master of the ceremonies at the hot wells at Clifton. • The letters of the girls to Miss Bird tell the story from just

before the time of Maria's engagement up to the moment when, rapidly wasting away in what was then called a con- sumption, she was carried off to Clifton for change of air and scene, and left there under Mrs. Pennington's care while Mrs. Siddons, with her elder daughter as companion, made a pro-

vincial acting tour.

The letters of the girls to Miss Bird begin in the winter of

1797, when Maria is meeting Lawrence secretly at his studio in Greek Street. It is Miss Bird who arranges the meetings, and Maria writes to her after one of them to complain of her cross looks at an evening party, which appears to have fallen on the same day as the clandestine meeting. She is glad Miss Bird "liked her in black," all the more that she has dressed in the dark :-

"I did not see myself before I went out, for I came home so late [from the studio] that I went to my room directly and would not ring for candles that they might fancy I had been in a great while. I felt how to dress myself, absolutely, and came down about the middle of dinner, and my Father ask'd me where I had been? I told a story, and there was an end of it."

In the same letter there is an allusion to Sally's ill-health. Both the sisters had lung troubles, which were continually laying them up. When Maria began to be ill a little later, her sister thought the mental anxiety of her love affair was preying on her health, and pressure was put on the parents to allow a marriage. Consent was actually given in the beginning of 1798, Mr. Siddons promising to relieve Lawrence

say SO he has given us too plainly to understand that a consumption may be the consequence." Yet Sally herself cannot help being hopeful. She thinks her sister's "youth and the unremitting attention that is paid her may conquer this complaint." Not a word must be breathed to Mr. Lawrence, "who would be almost distracted, now especially, when every desire of his heart is, without oppo- sition, so near being accomplished." So writes Sally one moment, and then a few sentences further on she remembers some trait in Lawrence's character that starts another train of thought. "What will our friend do without some diffi- culties to overcome ? But perhaps in this pursuit he has

found enough to satisfy him, and will be content to receive Maria, tho' there now remain no obstacles. Well, I rejoice sincerely that there is an end to all this mystery, and I think Maria has as fair a prospect of happiness as any mortal can desire."

No letter from either girl tells exactly how the catastrophe declared itself, but within a very few weeks of Sally's brave rejoicings over her sister's prospect of happiness both are writing in a changed key. Maria's letters at this time are singularly pathetic. Sally's, pardonably enough, take on a brisker tone, and she becomes quickly assured that Maria never cared very deeply for Lawrence. "It is now near a fortnight since this complete breaking off, and Maria is in good spirits, talks and thinks of dress, and company, and beauty, as usual. Is this not fortunate ? Had she lov'd him, I think this event would almost have broken her heart ; I rejoice that she did not." It is impossible not to feel that poor Sally is rejoicing at this point on her own account as much as on her sister's. If Maria is so quickly consoled, why may not she, after an interval, receive back the lover who wants to return to his allegiance ? But Maria's rapidly increasing weakness, the feelings of the family, the behaviour of Lawrence himself, and Sally's own instincts of delicacy widen the breach as the story moves on, and in the deathbed tragedy a promise is finally wrung from Sally never to mari7 Lawrence. The description of Maria's death given by Mrs. Pennington, in one of the longest letters ever written, is very wonderful, and the most wonderful thing of all is that, being a woman of quick sympathies and considerable knowledge of character, she should have addressed this letter to Lawrence, for whom up to this point she entertained a friendly, not to say affectionate, regard, in spite of her impatience of his un- reasonable behaviour. Lawrence, having established himself in a hotel at Clifton under a feigned name at a time when Sally had left her mother—still on tour—to help Mrs. Pen- nington to nurse Maria, had importuned the good lady with letters and petitions for interviews. Mrs.Pennington's replies to him make most excellent reading, though they justify a criticism passed upon her by Sally Siddons on the occasion of a water-party in which the Penningtons were to take part. "It will be pleasant, but I should like it much better if Mrs. Pennington were not to be of the party, for her incessant talk is rather fatiguing, and the beauties of Nature call forth such a torrent of eloquence that there is no possibility of enjoying them in her company." Torrents flow from Mrs. Pennington's pen upon every incident and aspect of her dear Maria's case, her Sally's delicate position, and Lawrence's qualities and defects. She evidently found a dramatic pleasure in the affair, and Lawrence was very well aware of it. Mrs. Siddons he tried to terrify into recognition of his renewed suit of Sally by threats of suicide. With Mrs. Pennington he used other weapons,—the rhodomontade of romance, cajolery, and flattery of her good nature. "She has mortified his vanity. But he forgives her everything, and repents of nothing, because all that has passed has introduced him to Mrs. Pennington and made her his friend" :—

"Not a fine broiling day that comes but I shall think of the Field behind the Bear and my 'much enduring' Friend trudging backwards and forwards for very Life, regardless of Complexion, Fatigue, or Character (for the Crowds that were looking at us ! !), and then flumping down, never minding what she be about,' upon a dusty Bank ; the shoes wore out—the Legs unable to support her—and all but the kind Heart exhausted in the effort! Was ever love-lorn Shepherdess under the Hawthorn so interesting as Mrs. Pennington under that scrubbed Oak, with not one atom of Romance about her, as she says, and only the victim of it in others ;—but Romance—where is it to be found if not in you ?

But in the end it was Mrs. Pennington who drew the curse from Lawrence's lips—or rather pen—when she gave him every detail of Maria's death, including the poor girl's assertion that he "had no honour," and her successful solemn insistence that her sister should promise never to "marry that man." Sally promised—but she tried hard not to do so—and, having promised, stood by her word. She outlived her sister a very few years, long enough, how- ever, to have lived down her own affection for Lawrence.

GIFT-BOOKS.

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