70 LITERATURE AND DRAMA 



Surely no one but a Mrs. Siddons could do so. 



An old servant offers to sacrifice his little fortune to the 

 much-loved gamester who has been out all night for the first 

 time : he proposes to go to him and if possible to bring him 

 home. Mrs. Beverley says, ' Do so, then ; but take care how 

 you upbraid him I have never upbraided him.' There is a 

 note here : 



Follows him to the door ; then laying her hand on his arm 

 detains him with an earnest look, and then speaks solemnly. 



The lady uses much the same language to her husband's 

 sister Charlotte, and Professor Bell notes : 



She repeats an injunction she had given to Jarvis, more famili- 

 arly but with equal earnestness, with more sorrow and less of ^dignity ; 

 then crossing the stage to go out, she bows kindly to Charlotte ; 

 then, with her finger up and a fine look of determination, leaves 

 her. 



In a subsequent scene the husband has come home, and his 

 honest friend Jewson tries to open his eyes to the machinations 

 of the villain Stukeley by telling what a bad boy he had been at 

 school. Mrs. Siddons, who listens, is described thus : 



She stands with riveted attention. She is behind at a little 

 distance. The earnest and piercing look of her eyes, the simplicity 

 of her attitude, is perfect nature. 



The gamester replies to his honest friend : ' You are too 

 busy, sir.' Mrs, Beverley rejoins : c No, not too busy ; mis- 

 taken, perhaps that had been milder.' The note on this 

 runs : 



Comes up to Beverley with a hasty anxiety and hurried voice, 

 alarm and kind reproach in her look and manner. 



The notes on the 4 Gamester ' end here. 



We are nowadays happily delivered from the false sentiment 

 which required the ideal woman to love the more, the more she 

 was ill-treated. We are rather in danger of shutting our eyes 

 to the real beauty of patient Grisyld, the original of many 

 copies, mostly, like Mrs. Beverley, caricatures. Chaucer's 

 Grisyld fawns unpleasantly, but in the story of Griselda as 



