Death by syphilis: the grim truth about Sarah Siddons, the biggest star of the 1800s

The actress Sarah Siddons was a superstar. At the height of her career in the late 18th century, audiences flocked to see her, with many succumbing to what was called “Siddons fever”: weeping, breaking into hysterics and fainting, so strongly did they connect to the characters she portrayed on stage. Lady Macbeth was a particular highlight in her repertoire – Siddons saw her as just as guilty as her husband. Yet there was an inherent contradiction in her interpretation. She won audiences over by emphasising the character’s maternal fragility, and she was particularly celebrated for her version of the sleepwalking scene where she repeatedly tried to scrub the phantom blood from her hands – then, a novel idea which she reprised triumphantly throughout her career. 

In an age where Siddons’s acting contemporaries were either the kept mistresses of powerful men or former prostitutes – or both – she promoted her self-image as a virtuous woman, proud mother and dutiful wife. “One would as soon make love to Mrs Siddons as to the Archbishop of Canterbury,” was how one friend put it. She knew the power of her brand and she controlled it fiercely. 

Her rise coincided with the growth of the popular press, and Siddons understood she needed to do everything she could to keep them on side, carefully curating how she was perceived. She ensured the greatest artists of the day painted beautiful portraits of her. Gainsborough complained that her nose was too long, but his picture of Siddons graces The National Gallery to this day. Reynolds, Romney and Lawrence were among the many other artists who painted her. 

Suddenly, there is a renewed interest in her story.  My new biography is published in May and the playwright April de Angelis has written The Divine Mrs S starring Rachael Stirling (Private Lives, The Detectorists) which has just opened at the Hampstead Theatre. We were both struck by the parallels between Siddons’s image management and the way those in the public eye today seek to control their brand. Such image-management also begged the question: what did she have to hide?

Siddons’s past biographers have tended to accept her version of events. But I found myself looking again at some of the facts of her life. Were things really so good with her husband, William? He gave her venereal disease, after all. (This was revealed in a letter by her friend Hester Piozzi.) She might have claimed she suffered from a skin condition called erysipelas. But, as my biography lays out, having spoken to medical professionals and compared the pattern of her recurring symptoms, that it seems far more likely she ultimately died from fourth stage syphilis – the diagnosis of “erysipelas” was given by a friendly doctor to spare her blushes (and those of her fans). Ultimately, though, there is no way of telling exactly what she died from. In addition to this obscurity, a middle-aged fling with her fencing instructor has also all but been airbrushed out of the story.

She had ample reason to control the truth. Her fame was hard-won. She grew up in a troupe of strolling players – their life was physically tough and financially fragile. Always on the road, they never owned a permanent home. Her brother recalled having to dig up a turnip from a nearby field as he’d had nothing to eat for days.

Aged only 20, she had come to London to appear in the final season of the great theatrical impresario, David Garrick. She was already married to fellow actor William Siddons and the mother of two young children. But Siddons’s time working for Garrick was a disaster. On her first night she tottered onto the stage in an unflattering salmon pink costume. So overcome was she by the huge audience that her voice failed her. She barely whispered her lines. As the season went on she found herself marginalised by Garrick – cast in ever smaller parts, or even not cast at all. Her contract was not renewed. For Siddons, who knew of no working life outside the theatre, poverty beckoned and she fell into a depression.

Gradually, painstakingly, she rebuilt her career. She changed her style: having originally thought of herself as a comic actress, she realised that her real talent lay in tragedy. She began playing a particular kind of heroine – virtuous, principled, noble – in a series of melodramas which were hugely popular at the time but hardly ever performed now, such as Arthur Murphy’s The Grecian Daughter (1772) and Nicholas Rowe’s 1714 Jane Shore. Today, her characters feel hopelessly passive, with no real agency. And yet Siddons’s audiences adored them. 

Eventually, seven years after her disastrous first season, having carefully rebuilt her career in the provinces, Siddons was tempted back to London. Her first night, playing Isabella in Thomas Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage (1694), was triumphant. Several audience members swooned, and the audience were so enraptured they momentarily forgot to applaud at the end. One critic talked of her “creating a universal and melting sympathy”. Another wrote that she had founded a new religion. Fashionable society flocked to see her. After that, she never looked back. 

Siddons’s husband William wasn’t a very good actor, and so he became Siddons’s manager instead. He negotiated hard – sometimes too hard – to get the highest possible fees for her. Soon Siddons gained a reputation for being mean and grasping. Anonymous critics gave her the nickname Lady Sarah Save-All. Poison pen letters claimed that she “would as soon part with her eye tooth as with a guinea”. But Siddons was the sole breadwinner, haunted by the experiences of her early life. And none of the money she made was hers. By law, William owned all the couple’s assets. He didn’t find it easy being eclipsed by his wife, so he began to seek solace outside the marriage. A friend found Siddons weeping at the news that William had taken a mistress.

In The Divine Mrs S, de Angelis imagines how it would be if Siddons took control of her own destiny and set out to find a role that really represented her. In de Angelis’s version, she commissions a female playwright to write her a truly leading role. “We have no historical record that this happened,” De Angelis admits, “but we don’t know that it didn’t.”

Siddons died in 1831, aged 75, having not trod the boards for many years, and yet 5,000 people lined the streets to watch her funeral procession. The leading lady had succeeded in her aim. Her image as a national treasure was secure.

Today, we can see Siddons’s tactics in managing her brand for what they were. On the one hand they largely protected her from a vicious press; her fans saw her as untouchable, the Queen of Drury Lane. Yet she was also imprisoned by her public image. The fact that, over two hundred years later, we are only beginning to question her particular style of brand-management, shows just how successful she was – building her career by caging her true self. 

Sarah Siddons: The First Celebrity Actress by Jo Willett is published by Pen & Sword Books on 30 May 2024, RRP £25.00

The Divine Mrs Siddons is playing at the Hampstead Theatre until April 27 (hampsteadtheatre.com)