CHAPTER IX

MY BROTHER. MUSIC AND THE DRAMA

My vagabond pen has strayed far from the year 1863; I must retrace my steps. In the month of April of that year my eldest brother, Percy, was married to the brilliant daughter of Lord Egerton of Tatton. It was the happiest of marriages, which was without a cloud until his too early death in 1883. He was a very clever man, but terribly hampered by bad health. He was originally in the Army, having entered the 43rd Regiment, from which he exchanged into the 52nd and afterwards into the Scots Guards. But he was so crippled with rheumatic gout that he had to leave the Army, and after a while entered the Diplomatic Service, in which he served at Berlin, Brussels, Frankfort and Copenhagen. He was one of the few, the very few men who really mastered the intricacies of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Some people say that there were only two—Bismarck and his intimate enemy, the late Sir Robert Morier. He remained for several years an attaché, and then read for the Bar, got called, and entered with zeal into politics. He was not successful in gaining a seat in Parliament, which was a great pity, for he was an exceptionally effective speaker. However, he was able to render good service to the Conservative party in other ways.

He had no pretensions to scholarship, but he had the instinct of good nervous English, which, combined with a sound knowledge of law and of affairs, made him an excellent writer of pamphlets, leading articles, and political skits. To be a regular contributor to the _Owl_, which Laurence Oliphant edited, was a feather in any man’s cap, and he was one of the seven original signatories of the Primrose League. It is pretty certain that had he lived he would have made his mark in the political world. _Dîs aliter visum est_—he died at the moment when life seemed to be dangling its choicest prizes before him.

* * * * *

In 1858, immediately after leaving Oxford, I was pressed into the Amateur Musical Society by Henry Leslie, who was then its conductor, and made to play first cornet. In that year was held the first rehearsal for the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. The “Dictionary of National Biography” (Article Costa) gives the date as 1857, which is wrong. The object was to test the capabilities of the place for a vast orchestra and chorus. Our Society was invited to join the band, and so it came to pass that I played at the first cornet’s desk at the rehearsal in 1858, and afterwards at the Festivals of 1859, 1862, and at the opening of the great Exhibition in London in the latter year. Costa, afterwards Sir Michael, conducted.

The people who witnessed the failure of the young Neapolitan baritone at Birmingham in 1829 could have had no suspicion that they were rejecting a man who was destined to become a dominant influence in the music of this country. Costa’s voice was weak and unattractive, but he had already been deeply schooled in the science of his art by Zingarelli, and had made some mark as a composer. It was Clementi who recognized his true vocation as conductor: if the story be true that after his first appearance as leader, the members of the band, who were not inclined to receive him with favour, presented him with a box of razors as a way of twitting him with his youth, there were good judges who at once formed the highest opinion of his power.

The great Duke of Wellington,[32] who was devoted to music, and never, if he could help it, missed the “Ancient Concerts” or the opera, was in a box with my father the first time that he saw Costa conduct. He was immensely struck by the young conductor’s dominant personality, and turning round to my father said, “That young man could have commanded an army.” He recognized a magnetic influence which no one who ever played under him failed to feel. His sway over his orchestra was phenomenal. He was the incarnation of masterful will-power. When I first knew him in about the year 1850 he was forty years of age. A sturdy, powerfully-built man of about the middle height—curly, rather fair hair—whiskers meeting under his chin; slightly pitted with the smallpox; a pale complexion. But what always struck me most about him was the massive lower jaw, that meant so much. I knew him well till his death in 1884, or rather till his terrible illness in 1883—paralysis, which deprived him of the power of speech. The last time I saw him in Pall Mall he could only point with his finger to his tongue; he shook his head sadly, his eyes filled with tears, he pressed my hand warmly in a parting which we both knew must be the last.

I remember the occasion when after we had rehearsed Meyerbeer’s opening music for the Exhibition of 1862, the composer bowed, thanked the band, and hailed Costa as the greatest conductor of the world. Richter is the only conductor that I have seen who could be compared with him. Leaving on one side the many faults that have been found with Costa as a musician—chiefly for tampering with scores—I believe no one could excel him in the art of conveying his intentions to a great army of performers. When he stepped into the orchestra, firmly grasped his bâton—not holding it with ladylike daintiness between two fingers as do so many emasculate conductors of to-day—he would give two curious side to side movements with his head, a little trick which never failed, and then the beating of the first bar, firm and decided, made itself felt throughout band and audience, and one realized the appreciation of the great Duke.

It would hardly be thought likely that the rehearsals of a Handel Festival would lead to comic incidents—but they did to not a few. One was at the rehearsal for the miscellaneous day. We were ready for “See the Conquering Hero Comes.” The chorus was to be heralded by brass instruments alone. Costa lifted his bâton and called out, “Now, Brass! One bar for nothing!” Down came the stick and in the dead silence of “one bar for nothing,” a solitary little tenor voice piped out “See the Conquering——” He got no further, Costa tapped his desk, folded the bâton under his arm and roared out, “ARE YOU BRASS?” There was a roar of laughter. Poor little tenor! He must have wished that the Palace might collapse and he sink unnoticed in the ruins.

Talking of that day, who that heard it could ever forget the tragic pathos of Sims Reeves’s singing of “Waft her, Angels”? That and his thrilling declamation of the recitative at the beginning of the Messiah, “Comfort ye my people,” are among the most haunting memories of my musical days.

It was a time of great singers. Amongst our own folk Clara Novello, Miss Dolby, and Santley with Sims Reeves made a great quartet; for the rendering of oratorios there could hardly be a finer. Amongst the foreign artists, Grisi and Mario, Lablache, Ronconi, Graziani, Titiens, Alboni, Giuglini, Patti, Trebelli, are names that will live.

With Mario and Grisi I was very intimate, they had been old friends of my father’s; indeed Mario and he had sung together when Mario was an amateur and came to London as Conte di Candia, a handsome young Sardinian officer. There were concerts at Bridgewater House at which Lady Sandwich was the soprano, Miss Gent, a beautiful Irish lady, the contralto, Mario tenor, and my father the baritone. When Mario made his _début_ in Paris, my father travelled all the way from Frankfort, posting, to applaud him. For many years, till I went out to China, I used to go almost every Sunday during the summer to Mario’s villa to spend the afternoon in the garden, often remaining to dinner. They kept open house on Sunday, and I fancy never knew beforehand how many guests they would have—ten? twelve? twenty? All were made welcome. Madame Grisi at the head of the table, smiling and beautiful, though no longer young, with her eyes beaming sweetness, was the picture of happy content. She did not talk much, but she had just one little kind word for everybody, and a motherly tenderness which seemed to enfold the whole world upon which those glorious eyes were looking.

[Illustration: MARIO.

_By Lord Leighton, P.R.A._]

Mario was an altogether delightful companion. He was an artist to his finger-tips. He was no mean sculptor, a learned collector of books and manuscripts, a scholar full of appreciation of all that was beautiful and refined. Many years after the time of which I am writing, when he came to England for the last time, a little before his death, he telegraphed to me to say he was in London. I was in the country and came up at once. He came to my house and we had a long talk over old times. I showed him some first states of engravings by William Faithorne, the elder. To my amazement he knew all about them. “Ah! mon cher,” said he in explanation, “J’ai eu toutes les folies.”

In the days of his opulence his charity and generosity knew no bounds. Many of his compatriots lived upon him. One day I was walking with him in his garden at Fulham, when up came a caricature of a man, as tall and lean as a church tower, with a hat that reached the skies, dressed in a long snuff-coloured coat falling to his heels, a grizzled beard, and a cascade of grey hair over his shoulders; a figure out of Struwel Peter. He made a low sweeping bow as if he meant to cut the turf with his hat. “Signor Mario!” another obeisance, hand on heart, and once more the steeple hat shaved the grass. “Ah! Dottor Beggé, what have you there?” “Signor Mario, I hold here a manuscript”—producing a roll from under his arm—“but a manuscript! such a manuscript!” and he blew a kiss into the air. “Well! What do you want for it?” asked Mario. “For you, Signor Mario, a mere nothing, only twenty pounds sterling.” Mario looked at it, bought it, and the long Doctor, bowing even lower than before, stalked off happy. Mario turned round to me and said, “Ca ne vaut pas vingt sous! Mais, ce pauvre Beggé, il faut bien qu’il vive.”

Another Sunday an obviously very impecunious Italian came up and told a piteous story of misery at home. Mario did not hesitate a moment; he told the man to go to his room, open a drawer in his writing-table where he would find some notes and gold, and take what he wanted. He was a grand, large-hearted, generous creature; one of the most lovable of men.

In his later days Mario used to be subject to sudden flushing and slight giddiness—out of this the jealousy and ill-nature of rivals got up the myth that he drank. He was well aware of this and made fun of it. At dinner one evening there was some Château Lafitte of ’48 on the table; Mario poured out a quarter of a tumbler of this and filled it up with water. I told him that it was an act of vandalism to drown so rare a wine. He held up the glass laughing and said, “Mon cher, c’est avec cela que je me suis fait une réputation d’ivrogne.” Sometimes after dinner a valse would be played and Mario would call out, “Chi vuol ballare con Papa?” and he would dance with his children, then little girls, like a boy in his teens. They adored him and their mother, who looked on radiant.

One met many famous people in that villa. There it was that I last saw the Countess Castiglione—still beautiful, though, dreading as it was said that her beauty might fade, she had already retired from the world before her charms should begin to wane. The first time I met her was at an afternoon party at Holland House, a dream of loveliness acknowledged by everybody; not a fault to be found from the crown of her head to the tips of her feet, and what arms and hands! Then she was in her pride of queendom, radiant, attracting all eyes. Now she was dressed in black, thickly veiled, and speaking only to Mario and Grisi. But disguise herself as she might, she could not altogether hide her transcendent charms.

Whether speaking or singing, I have never heard such a voice as Mario’s. It was pure music. The best testimony to its quality came to me secondhand from Richard Wagner. I was talking with Siegfried Wagner about voices, and I said that without a doubt the finest tenor that I had ever known was Mario. “Yes,” said Siegfried, “my father always said the same thing.” This witness is the more valuable as no one could accuse Wagner of any predilection for the Italian school of song.

Giuglini, the tenor of the rival house where Titiens reigned supreme, used to be compared with Mario; but in my judgment this was absurd. Giuglini’s voice, lovely as it was, had a slight defect of “throatiness,” whereas Mario’s voice came pure and clear from the chest. On the stage there was absolutely no comparison between the two men. Mario’s great beauty and his marvellous power of acting, combined with an irresistible personal charm, made him unique. It would be difficult to imagine anything more thrilling than the tragedy of the two great duets with Grisi in the _Huguenots_ and the _Favorita_.

Older people were wont to say that when he first appeared on the stage he was a “stick,” and that it was Grisi who taught him and inspired him with the fire of her own genius. If that was so, she found an apt pupil. She was certainly an incomparable actress, but the talent must have been latent in him too, even though the credit of having called it forth may belong to her.

In his last years, when he had retired from the stage, had lost his fortune, and was custode of a museum, Queen Margherita was extremely anxious to hear him sing, and commissioned Edoardo Vera, her music master, to try and get him to do so. After some difficulty Vera, who told me the story, succeeded, and transposed one or two of his old songs for him so that he was really singing as a baritone. So managed, Vera told me that the voice was as velvety and beautiful as ever. The Queen was delighted, and the dear old Mario, white-haired and white-bearded, charmed with his reception. I can well believe in the unimpaired beauty of so much of the singing voice as remained, for when last I saw him in 1879, his speaking voice was still instinct with the same music that I remembered when in the opening of the _Barbiere_ he used to call out to Figaro behind the scenes. He died on the 11th of December, 1883.

During the last few years of her life, Grisi’s voice began to show signs of wear and tear. It was generally as full and sonorous as ever, and the “bel canto” was glorious. But now and then the notes would fail her, and sometimes it made one nervous to listen to her. Vera, always witty and not seldom ill-natured, once answered when someone said, “La Grisi a toujours de bien beaux moments.” “Oui, mais en revanche elle a des fichus quarts d’heure.” That was exaggeration born of jealousy, for Vera had a sister Sophie, whom he adored, and who always had to sing Adalgisa when he would fain have had her take Grisi’s place as Norma.

Of one musical recollection I am very proud. Grisi, in 1859, chose me to play the cornet obbligato for her in a Romance by Vera, “Cari fior ch’io stessa colsi,” and it ended with a double cadence for the voice and the obbligato instrument. The second time that I accompanied her was at a concert at Dudley House given for the benefit of a poor Italian baritone, Ciabatta, who was dying of consumption. He, poor fellow, had little voice for the opera, but was an excellent singing master. His misfortune was that he was one of the handsomest men that could be seen, a perfect Apollo, and so when he took the best recommendations, he was rejected as dangerous. “Toujours la même histoire,” he said piteously once, after a barren morning’s lesson-hunting, “les mamans ne veulent pas de moi! Elles disent toutes que je suis trop beau.”

Of course, because Mario had a villa at Fulham, Giuglini, as representing the rival house, must have one also. His villa had a long strip of garden with a sundial at the bottom of it. Here on Sundays he would invite his friends, and when they were gathered together he would cover the sundial with breadcrumbs, attracting sparrows, tits, blackbirds and thrushes. As soon as there was a sufficient congregation of these poor innocents, he, standing in the verandah, would send for a gun and blaze away at them, exclaiming to his admiring guests, “Voyez-vous, j’adore la chasse!” What a sportsman! Of his success and charm as a singer there can be no doubt; that he did not please me better was probably my own fault. His end was a sad one. He lost his reason and died miserably in an asylum, singing, as I have been told, to the last, spending his lovely voice in the solitude of a madman’s cell.

Jenny Lind I only heard after she had left the stage. Her operatic career was a short one: so far as London was concerned it only lasted two years. Her first appearance was in 1847, her last in 1849, when she was only twenty-nine years old. She continued to sing in concerts and oratorios and made a very successful tour in America, but the theatre knew her no more.

I can well remember how all London went mad over her in the _Figlia del Reggimento_, when she reached the zenith of her fame. In later years, when she was a woman of about forty, I used to meet her and her husband at the house of a friend. She was a tallish, stately, typical Swedish woman, with a wealth of fair hair, no special beauty of feature, but an expression and above all a smile that were of angelic goodness. The voice was still crystal-clear, true and sweet; even the highest notes—and heaven knows what altitudes she reached!—were as soft and caressing as those of the middle register.

In my friend’s little drawing-room, with perhaps half a dozen people present, all sympathetic, Goldsmid would sit down at the piano, and she would pour out her soul, like the “Swedish Nightingale” that she was, in liquid music, shedding around her a happiness which she herself surely felt. Those little modest dinners were feasts indeed.

Later on in these sketches I hope to have a good deal to say about Thomas Carlyle, but one conversation that I had with him seems to fit in so well here that I feel inclined to take it out of its turn. It is strange that he, who could so cruelly scourge the opera as he did in the “Keepsake” for 1852,[33] should have spoken, with all the rugged enthusiasm that was in him, both of Jenny Lind and Grisi.

I forget how the subject cropped up, but he went off at score, contrasting the two: “The burning, passionate nature of the fiery Southern woman with the calm, cold temperament of the Northern singer”—those were his very words. Of the two I think that, Scot though he was, the fire of the South appealed to him more than the snows of the North. He preached on for several minutes, giving due meed of praise to both the great singers, but always with a tilt of the scale in favour of Grisi.

Then from the opera he passed on to the stage, and there he recognized one figure above all others. He told me how he had seen Talma act in Paris—how great he was—how far ahead of all other actors. What appealed to him strongly was the statuesque side of the famous player’s genius, how completely he looked the part he was acting, especially in the old classical tragedies. “That man could so drape himself in a toga that you just felt that you had one of the ancient Romans before you.” When Carlyle spoke it was with the fire that he admired in “the Southern woman.” Ecclefechan could vie with Palermo. The lava of his volcanic talk swept all before it. I should have liked to have got him to speak of former lights of the English stage—the Kembles, the elder Kean and others. But it was of no use trying to stop him when once he had started. As easily might you hold the waters of Lodore with a butterfly-net. It was Jenny Lind, Grisi, Talma—nothing else.

There were some great actors in my young days. The infectious high spirits of the younger Charles Mathews, the solemn fun of Buckstone, Keeley, Toole and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi (the Paul-y-Tooly-technic, as some wag called it), Wigan and Leigh Murray, Benjamin Webster and many others were grand assets in the gaiety of the nation. It is something to have seen Charles Mathews in _London Assurance_, Wigan with his perfect French, in _The First Night_ (_Le Père de la Débutante_), Keeley and Leigh Murray in _The Camp at Chobham_. What perfection of acting! In light comedy and farce the English stage has always been richly endowed. Of tragedy perhaps the less said the better.

In the early fifties Macready, Phelps and Charles Kean were supposed to be the shining lights among the tragedians—Macready, indeed, soon about to pass into a tradition.[34] To me they gave no pleasure. They seemed to rant and roar and mouth, tearing to tatters Othello, Shylock, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear. Their methods were purely academic, mechanical and utterly unnatural. There was plenty of elocution, plenty of declamation—nothing spontaneous, nothing humanly possible; everything taught, nothing felt; of true emotion, begetting emotion in others, not a trace.

I once, in 1856, saw _Othello_ played in a barn at Killarney; the Moor was rather drunk, but he was as academic as the great professors; between him and them there was small difference. It was a question of degree. But here am I daring to criticize when I do not even know the jargon of the trade. What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the critics?

Be it my right to speak or not, I shall maintain that Robson, the meteoric man who for so short a time was a blazing light in the theatrical firmament, was the greatest actor that I ever saw on any stage at home or abroad. Upon him the mantle of Garrick had fallen, for there was no branch of his art that came amiss to him. He made his reputation in grotesque farces such as _The Wandering Minstrel_ and _Boots at the “Swan,”_ in which he showed the town masterpieces of eccentric character study; in burlesque he had no rival; and now and then, as in _The Yellow Dwarf_, he would burst into a fury of passionate acting without any suspicion of rant, that sent cold thrills through the house, making men feel what he would have been capable of achieving in tragedy.

But he was small, puny and weak, and probably his frame would hardly have carried him through one of the grand heroic parts. Where he was at his best and greatest was in such tender, appealing plays as _The Porter’s Knot_. Here was the real spirit of tragedy, and here he differed from the schoolmen of whom I have spoken, just as the pathos of a story of misery and woe, told simply and plainly from heart to heart by the sufferer himself, differs from the artificial emotion cooked up for a jury by a lawyer. He could draw tears from the stoniest. Unhappily the feeble body was soon worn out; his arduous work exhausted him; stimulants kept him up to the mark for a time, but they, too, exacted their penalty. His London successes lasted but some eight years, for he retired from the stage in 1862, and two years later he died, being not much more than forty years old.

When Dion Boucicault brought out _The Colleen Bawn_ with his beautiful wife as the Colleen, his Miles na Coppaleen fairly took the town by storm. The devil-may-care Irish joyousness which he threw into the part was irresistible, and carried actors and audience with it from his first entrance to the end. But there was one part of his which was even more striking. When he played _The Vampire_, the performance was so horrifying, so ghastly in its realism, that, if I remember right, it was soon withdrawn on that account. The public could not stand it, and it was not brought out again. It was a haunting performance.

First nights in the Victorian days were not the fashionable gatherings that they now are. People took no more notice of them than they did of ordinary performances. That accounted for my being present, quite by accident, at the first night of _The Bells_ on the 25th of November, 1871. The sensation which Irving created in it was sudden and startling. It was a magnificent success, and Irving’s fame was made. But what I thought even better was his performance of Jingle in _Pickwick_, by which the famous play was preceded. He was Jingle to the life. The impudent, lean, hungry, out-at-elbows stroller and swindler was a very picture of bohemian destitution. Irving’s many successes, his shortcomings and his mannerisms are of too recent date to need dwelling upon. Whether he was a great tragedian or not has been much debated; but I never heard two opinions as to his powers in comedy; his Jingle, his Jeremy Diddler and his Doricourt in _The Belle’s Stratagem_ were probably as perfect comedy as could be seen. Personally he was one of the most charming of men, and he made many fast friends.

I was present at a small party of men which he once gave after the play at the Lyceum. King Edward, then Prince of Wales, and many of the foremost men of the day had accepted his invitation. Toole was there, full of fun, and Irving recited the scene with the waiter in “David Copperfield.” He just stood leaning against the chimney-piece and told the story. But how he told it! That was an inimitable performance. The party did not break up until long after cock-crow. I drove away with Russell Lowell, the American Minister, in a belated, or rather be-earlied, hansom cab; it was summer time and broad daylight, and we two elderly gentlemen felt very dissipated and rather ashamed of being seen, but we both agreed that it would have been difficult to have a more agreeable gathering or a more genial host. The verdict of Lowell, wit, poet, diplomatist, man of letters and man of charm, was conclusive.

Of great actors England has always been prolific. I have left out many of those who were stars in the fifties and sixties. I have, for instance, said nothing of my friend Sir Squire Bancroft, whose memory must live if only for the noble use to which, for many years, he has devoted his great talents.

In great actresses, for some mysterious reason, we have not been so rich. When men talk of women who have been distinguished in tragedy, they still go back to the fame of Mrs. Siddons. Miss O’Neill is now forgotten. As Lady Becher I used constantly to meet her at the house of old Lady Essex (the famous Miss Stevens), who used to gather round her, together with all that was smartest in society, the fine flower of the world of art—almost all the great musicians whom I have mentioned above, Leighton, Landseer, Marochetti, Chorley, Planché and a host of celebrities. Lady Becher as an old lady, cold, stiff and alarming, certainly did not give one the idea of an actress who could so picture sorrow and agony as to create emotion. But of English tragic actresses whom I myself have seen I can recall but two—Adelaide Neilson and Ellen Terry. I wish we could claim the beautiful Mary Anderson, who _vera incessu patuit Dea_—but she, alas! is an American, though for the joy of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire she has made her home at Broadway. Adelaide Neilson worked her way to fame from beginnings of the poorest and the most squalid; she was an exemplification of the Japanese proverb “The lotus flower springs from the mud.” Here again was a meteor, for she died in Paris when only thirty-two years old; but she had lived long enough to win admiration by her beauty and great talent. Her lovable qualities appealed to her friends, and her kindness of heart endeared her to her brother and sister players. She was a born actress, and was endowed with that greatest of all gifts for a tragedian—the gift so conspicuous in Sarah Bernhardt—a speaking voice soft and tender, full of musical pathos and emotion, a voice which would of itself have aroused sympathy had she been less winsome in other ways than she was. But in truth she was a most attractive woman, beautiful to look at and a joy to listen to. Her early death left a void in the English stage.

Of Ellen Terry I need not speak. All men know what she is, and none deny her sovereignty. Besides, I am dealing only with the past. Will the future bring anything quite so charming?

Fifty or sixty years ago the palm went to the elder actresses. Mrs. Sterling as Peg Woffington in Tom Taylor and Charles Reade’s _Masks and Faces_, playing up to Benjamin Webster’s Triplet, was one of the most extraordinary pieces of acting that I ever saw; and when she appeared as the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ one could only mourn over the cruelty of time, feeling of how delightful a Juliet the years had robbed us. Mrs. Wigan, acting with her husband as Mrs. Sternhold in _Still Waters run Deep_, was memorably good, and when in _The Bengal Tiger_, in order to win the heart of the old Nabob (again Alfred Wigan as the tiger), she tried to smoke a hookah, her agonies were excruciatingly funny. Mrs. Keeley, too, was a tower of strength to any company. Her Jack Sheppard lives in my memory, as indeed do many of her parts, as a most finished dramatic picture—the prison scene absolutely harrowing. Like Robson and Garrick, she could be tragic or comic at will. In our young actresses, _ingénues_, we were not so fortunate as the play-goers of the present day.

But we did possess one star, at any rate, of the first magnitude. In 1862, when Miss Kate Terry appeared in _The Duke’s Motto_ with Fechter,[35] whose triumphs at Paris with Madame Doche in the creation of the _Dame aux Camélias_ were world-famous, all London, from Charles Dickens downwards, vowed that such romantic acting had never been seen and could never be beaten. The fascination of the love scenes was bewildering. There was nothing theatrical about them. They were the very poetry of emotion. When she left the stage after a very short and brilliant career to become the gracious châtelaine of Moray Lodge, that small portion of the world which calls itself Society was the gainer, but to the world at large it was a heavy loss.

Miss Madge Robertson, now Mrs. Kendal, was both a lovely girl and a most fascinating actress. She it was, unless my memory fails me, who with her husband created Gilbert’s _Pygmalion and Galatea_, which was also one of Miss Mary Anderson’s great parts. Gilbert was lucky in getting two such ladies to interpret him.

A list is mostly only interesting to those who appear in it, and this is mere list-making; no more than an attempt to register for the present generation the names of those who delighted their grandfathers—and most of those who are in it have _dis_appeared. But even from a list it is impossible to omit the name of Lady Bancroft. To all who saw her she will always remain a charming memory of the days when all the youth of London was in love with Miss Marie Wilton—across the footlights. Her sparkling gaiety, her delicious little impertinencies, her irresistible spirits, her entirely fascinating personality, were so full of life that the doctors might have prescribed a stall at the Strand Theatre for their rundown patients, when she was playing Pippo in _The Maid and the Magpie_, or one of her other burlesque parts. Then came the days of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre and Tom Robertson’s famous plays, _Society_, _Caste_, _Ours_, _School_—and here again Miss Marie Wilton proved her great powers in a new line. Acting more subtle and more refined has perhaps never been seen. Her troupe, moreover, was famous for the all-round excellence with which the pieces were given; it used to be a reproach to the English stage that if there were a first-rate star in the company, the rest of the characters were more or less left to chance, and people used to compare the slovenliness of our theatres with the exquisitely finished detail of Paris. At the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, under the Bancroft management, the finish given to the smallest parts was as careful and fastidious as that which marked the play of the chief actors. The result was a harmonious whole, setting an example which has wrought the best influence on our stage. The old slip-shod performances which I can remember would now no longer be tolerated, and for their disappearance much gratitude is owing to the Bancrofts. _Caste_ was, perhaps, their masterpiece. Lady Bancroft’s Polly Eccles, with her husband as Captain Hawtree, and Sir John Hare as Eccles, made the piece a landmark in the history of the English drama.

Of the gynæceum of the English stage I have no more to say. It would be pleasing for a veteran play-goer like myself to pay his tribute to the charm of such delightful actresses as Miss Irene Vanbrugh, Miss Marie Tempest, Miss Gladys Cooper and others. Their praises must be left to be sung by their own contemporaries, of whom I only wish that I were one.