Siddons and Rachel

Siddons and Rachel by Frederick Wedmore

This review by Frederick Wedmore discusses two short biographies by Mrs. A. Kennard in the Eminent Women series, one on Sarah Siddons and one on Rachel, weighing how well each captures its subject's stage artistry and private character. Wedmore notes that Siddons is harder to document fully because she belongs to an earlier, less systematic era of criticism, while Rachel lived when critics such as Jules Janin produced abundant records of her performances. Of Siddons's private life little remains to tell, whereas Rachel's could furnish many scandalous chronicles; Kennard, by her own preface, chose to draw out the poetry and romance in Rachel's life and reject what was base. Wedmore insists Rachel, though her life was a fever of excitement, was a dutiful daughter, a devoted mother, and occasionally a generous or constant friend. He contrasts the two women sharply: Rachel, a Jewess born in a Swiss inn and raised in France, was Bohemian and restless, once chafing after a mere day of respectability at Windsor; Siddons was an Englishwoman and a Kemble, marked by rigid self-control, though she had "the gift of tears." Wedmore reflects that Siddons's grand, formal style suited an age of firm artistic contour, while Rachel's fire and spontaneity, akin to what Desclée later brought to contemporary drama, would resonate more with modern audiences shaped by Romanticism and Naturalism. On biographical sources, he finds Campbell's and Boaden's lives of Siddons weak, crediting Kennard's debt instead to Percy Fitzgerald; on Rachel, he judges Houssaye too eager to amuse and Janin merely fluent, preferring Rachel's own letters to parents, sister, friends, and her master Samson as the truest record of her character. Finally, Wedmore compares their working lives: Siddons toured reluctantly in later years to repair her husband's financial losses and to afford a retirement carriage, caring greatly for the stage itself; Rachel, though drawn mainly to Bohemian company rather than the great world she was paraded before, lived chiefly for her art despite the chaos of her private decline.

By Frederick Wedmore · First published 1899 · Genre: Biography, Theater History, Theatrical Criticism · 1,383 words

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Two little books by Mrs. A. Kennard -- contributions to the ‘Eminent Women' series -- give with much tact and grace of treatment all that the ordinary reader, if not quite all the special student, needs to know about the two great tragic actresses of England and of France. With regard to both, the special student may ask, perhaps, for more of theatrical criticism, for an analysis more elaborate of that which was accomplished in sight of the public, by the two famous artists. Yet, as regards Sarah Siddons -- a tragedian removed from us now by the space of three generations -- there may well have been difficulties. Rachel, of course, lived in a period of criticism more diffuse and systematic; Jules Janin filling, in her day, to some extent, the place since filled by Vitu and Sarcey; and, indeed, the published records of her performances, though scattered, are elaborate and abundant. Turning from the public achievement to the private character, little else remains to be told of Mrs. Siddons; but of Rachel there might have been produced many a scandalous chronicle. Wrong from one point of view, Mrs. Kennard, in this matter, was certainly right from another. Of the ‘Dichtung' and the ‘Wahrheit,' which meet in the life of the artist, she has taken, in some respects, chiefly the ‘Dichtung. ' ‘We have tried,' she says herself, in her preface, ‘to extract the poetry and romance there is to be found in this life, rejecting what is base and unworthy. ' Nor must it, after all, be supposed that in Rachel's life -- outside her art -- all was unworthy or base. Always she was a dutiful daughter; always a devoted mother; sometimes a generous, and once or twice a constant, friend. But her life was a fever. And, in her maddened demand for excitement, it ran its course rapidly.

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Sarah Siddons · Rachel · theatre · actresses · biography · comparative biography · stage artistry · dramatic criticism · character analysis · private life · England · France

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