Free Goddess of the Green Room: (Georgian Series) by Jean Plaidy

was in her dressing room preparing to play Patrick in The Poor Soldier when Tate Wilkinson came in.
    ‘There’s a distinguished visitor in the theatre tonight,’ he told her,
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘The great Siddons herself.’
    Dorothy felt as she had never felt in the theatre before: nervous. The great Sarah had surely come to see her because she would know that in a short time they would be playing together in Drury Lane. It couldn’t be that Sarah would regard her as a rival – scarcely that – but all actresses were uneasy when someone younger and reputed to be very talented was about to share their audiences.
    ‘You’ll be all right,’ said Wilkinson.
    When he left her she studied her reflection in the glass. She looked really scared. She would be all right once she trod the boards. She was actress enough for that.
    But she could not forget that everything depended on what happened at Drury Lane. And Sarah Siddons, at this moment,was seated regally in her balcony box over the stage, come to pass judgement.
    Dorothy played for the statuesque woman in the box which was poised above the stage – a place of honour for Sarah – but it was not one of her best performances. It was not the way to play. One did not act to impress. One forgot an audience when on the stage; one became the part which was the only way to play it. But who could forget Sarah? Sarah herself had no intention that anyone should.
    The eldest daughter of Robert Kemble had acting in her blood. She was the Queen of the Drama and she intended to keep the crown until she died.
    She was some thirty years old and had appeared at Drury Lane when she was seventeen and David Garrick had been the actor-manager, so she was not going to be easily impressed by the performance of a provincial player. And she made it quite clear that she was not.
    When the performance was over she was escorted back-stage with the ceremony of royalty – for the part she played off-stage was that of a queen – and asked for her opinion of Mrs Jordan’s performance.
    ‘Since it is asked,’ said Mrs Siddons, pronouncing her words clearly as though to reach the back of the house, and striking the pose of a seer, ‘I will give my considered opinion.’ She never used one word when six would fit the same purpose. ‘I have come to a conclusion while watching this performance and it is this: Mrs Jordan would be well advised to remain in the provinces rather than to venture on to the London stage at Drury Lane.’
    It was what Dorothy’s enemies had wanted to hear.
    Dorothy herself laughed. Nothing Mrs Siddons could say could stop her. She was under contract now. It had been signed by Richard Brinsley Sheridan himself together with his business partners Thomas Linley and Dr James Ford. With such a contract in her pocket should she care for the attempts of any actress – even Sarah Siddons herself – to undermine her?
    ‘The woman’s jealous!’ declared Grace.
    And although it seemed incredible that the Queen of Drury Lane could be envious of a little provincial actress as yet untried,Dorothy liked to believe this was so. After all she was some seven or eight years younger than the great tragedienne; and although Sarah was one of the most handsome women she had ever seen there was something forbidding about her.
    In any case, what was the use of brooding?
    She was going to Drury Lane to seek her fortune.
    And that September she left the North for London, taking with her her mother, Hester, her daughter Frances and brother Francis. The rest of the children went to Aunt Blanche in Wales; but Dorothy would support the whole family on the wages she was to receive in her new position.

Début at Drury Lane
    LONDON DELIGHTED AND fascinated. Dorothy knew as soon as she set eyes on it that it was here she wanted to stay. The bustling streets with their noisy people who shouted and laughed and seemed bent on enjoyment were full of life; and the carriages, the sedans with their exquisitely