Chapter II (1)

Mary Ann's prophecy was fulfilled. Her mother stood beside her at the garden gate when Jane and Selina drove away, her glances up and down the sunny street evincing all a convalescent's freshened interest in the outside world. The two faces were alike and yet unlike. The joy of living was in both; but a little uncertainty, a little appeal in the older woman's told that with her it depended to some degree upon the steadier flow of animal spirits in the younger.

Jane and Selina turned for a last look at the portly figures and waving handkerchiefs.

"Who would think to look at them," said Jane, "that Ma had only just returned from the jaws of death! It ought to be a warning to them. Some day she'll go off in one of those attacks."

"Ma'n'Mary Ann are as like as two peas," said Selina. "They're Maberlys. There never was a Maberly yet that knew how to look ahead. I declare, it gave me the shivers to see these two plunging right out of a sick-bed into colors and fashions the way they did. Ma'd ought to listen to us and sell her house and live round with her married children; at her age she'd ought to be some place where sickness and death are treated in a serious way."

Upon this point Mrs. Colquhoun was firm. She could never go back to life on a farm again, she said; "living in town was _living_." But she compromised by agreeing to devote the whole of the next summer to visiting her married children.

That was a long summer to Mary Ann. There was something wanting in all the small accustomed pleasures of her simple life, until the middle of August came, and the time set for her mother's return was within counting distance. Then her spirits rose higher with every hour. As a toper would celebrate his happiness at the saloon, she went to Mr. Merrill's dry-goods shop, and after a revel in that part of it where color most ran riot, she bought new chintz covering for the parlor furniture, a chrysanthemum pattern in various shades of fawn and glowing crimson.

The next step was to plan a reception to welcome her mother home and exhibit the new covering. Then a mighty idea struck her--this was the opportunity for the crimson velvet dress!

"I mayn't never have as good an excuse for it again," she said to the sewing-girl, "and it's the one thing needed to make everything complete. Me in that crimson and Ma in the fawn silk she had made when the Reverend Mr. Ellis came will be a perfect match for the furniture."

She patted the sofa back with affectionate pride.

"It does make you feel good to have anything new," she said, sighing contentedly. "_Anything_, I don't care if it's only a kitchen stove-lifter. But this!--There are an awful lot of things in the world do make you feel good; aren't there, Miss Adams? I mean common things, like putting on dry stockings when your feet are wet, or reading in bed, or sitting in a shady spot on a hot summer's day, with a muslin dress on--yes, or even eating your tea, if you happen to be feeling hungry and have something particularly nice," added this cheerful materialist.

The crimson velvet dress was being fitted for the last time when a letter was handed to Mary Ann. Her spectacles were downstairs, so she asked the sewing-girl to read it.

"'My dear aunt,'" Miss Adams began, "'Grandma took cold in church a week ago last Sunday and has been laid up----'"

There was a quick rustling of the velvet train. Mary Ann was vanishing into the clothes-closet. In a moment she reappeared with a small valise in her hand, and Miss Adams saw in her face what no one had ever seen there before--the shadow of a fear that hovered always on the outer edge of her happy existence and now stood close by her side. Mary Ann might be nine-tenths Maberly, but the other tenth was Colquhoun, after all.

"Put a dress into it, please," she said, handing the valise to Miss Adams. "No, I won't wait to take this off--I've a waterproof that will cover it all up. Pin the train up with safety pins--never mind if it does make pin-holes--I've just ten minutes to catch the train. _A week ago Sunday!_ Oh, why didn't they let me know before?"

When she alighted from the train at the flag station, she was clutching the waterproof close at the neck. She held it in the same unconscious grasp when she entered Jane's big farm-house, by way of the kitchen. Selina was there, making a linseed poultice, and the odor was mingled with another which she knew afterwards to be the odor of black dye.

In her mother's bedroom the same acid odor was in the air, and Jane was sitting at the window with a piece of black sewing in her hands. Jane's husband and John Maberly were standing at the foot of the bed, silent and melancholy, looking as awkward as men always do in a sick-room; Jane's stern gloom was tinged with a condescending pity for beings so out of place. Mary Ann saw them all at the first glance. Then she forgot everything; she was snuggling down against the bed, making the little, tender, glad, sorry sounds a mother makes when she has been separated from her baby.

When she lifted her head the men were leaving the room, John's face working. Selina was there with the poultice. She took it from her. One look into her mother's face had been enough. From that moment she seemed to be holding her back by sheer force of will from the edge over which she was slipping.

There was no merry gossip and laughter now, there were no love stories, no monologues with pauses for smiles. Mary Ann felt that a careless word or look would be enough to loosen that frail hold on life. When the doctor came, he found his patient in charge of a stout woman in a fresh linen dress, whose self-command was so perfect that he did not waste many words in softening the opinion for which she followed him to the door.

"Your mother's age is against her," he said. "The bronchitis in itself is not alarming, but her heart is weak, and I fear you must not expect her recovery."

He knew at once that she refused to accept his verdict, though she only said, "I'd like to telegraph for our doctor at home, if you don't mind."

When Dr. Corbett came, he confirmed the opinion.

"The bronchitis is no worse than usual," he added, "the treatment has been the same; but she seems to have lost her grip."

"There's no reason why she shouldn't catch a hold of it again," said poor Mary Ann, choking down her agony with the thought that she must return immediately to her mother's room.

"I don't quite understand it," the doctor said, with a questioning look. "The nursing--that's been good? Dr. Black tells me so."

"Yes, Jane and Selina are both good nurses, better'n what I am, if it wasn't that Ma's used to me."

"And there's no obstacle to her recovery that you know of?" Mary Ann shook her head. "Well, Miss Mary Ann, we must just conclude that it's the natural wearing out of a good machine. And we'll do what we can."

When Mary Ann went back to her mother's room, she found her a little roused from the stupor in which she had been lying. The visit of her own doctor, the accustomed tendance, had touched some spring that set old wheels running. With the clairvoyance love so often gives to the sick-nurse, Mary Ann knew that she had something to say to her.

She sat by the bed and waited. A fluttering whisper came at last.

"Did you see Jane's hands?"

Mary Ann's mind, seeking desperately for a clue, flashed from the stains on her sister's hands, which she had vaguely set down to black currant jelly, to the acid smell in the kitchen--to the black sewing--to the forgotten shock of a year ago.

"They asked me where I'd like to lie--beside Pa or in the cemetery in town."

"It's their forehandedness, Ma. I never did know such a forehanded pair. Talk about meeting trouble half way--Selina'n'Jane don't wait for it to start out at all."

"Selina read out of the paper that bronchitis was nearly always fatal after seventy."

"Well, now, what will those papers say next? Do you know what I read out of our own _Advertiser_ the other day? That every woman over thirty has had at least one offer of marriage. Now, that's a lie, for I never had an offer in my life. I'm kind of glad I didn't, Ma, for I suppose I'd have took it; and you and me do have an awfully good time together, don't we?"

But her mother was not listening now; it had been a flash merely of the old self. Mary Ann looked around the room until she found Jane's lap-board with a pile of black sewing on it. She gathered up the carefully pressed pieces and poked them roughly in between a large clothes cupboard and the wall.

"There!" she said to herself, "it will be a while before they find that, and when they do they can call it Mary Ann's flighty way of redding up a room."

She heard her sisters whispering in the hall and went out to them. Selina was tying her bonnet-strings.

"I'm going home to do a lot of cooking," she said in an important undertone. "John's wrote to Ma's relatives in Iowa, and some of them's sure to come."

Mary Ann looked into the wrinkled face; the past weeks had added new lines of genuine grief to it, yet she could not help seeing that Selina found some strange pleasure in all these incidents of a last illness. The words she had meant to say seemed futile. She was turning to go into her mother's room again when an idea came to her.

"Don't go yet," she said. "I want to show you two something."

She went into her bedroom and returned in a few minutes with the crimson dress over her arm.

"I was getting it fitted when the news of Ma's sickness came, and I just put a waterproof over it. The seams have got a little ravelled. I thought maybe you two would help me top-sew them."

"Mary Ann----!"

"You're so much cleverer than me with the needle. I was having it made for--for--" Mary Ann could not trust her voice to tell what she had been having it made for--"for an occasion. It won't be needed now as soon as I expected, but you know, Selina'n'Jane, you always say yourselves there's nothing like taking time by the forelock."

"Mary Ann----"

"A few hours would finish it up if we all got at it. Oh, there's Ma coughing. I must run and get the pail of water and hot brick to steam up the room."

She threw the dress into her sister's hands and was gone. They stood looking at each other across it.

"_Poor_ Mary Ann!"

"She talked about an occasion. I don't know more'n one kind of occasion people get dresses like this for. Can she mean----?"

"At her age? Nonsense!"

"Dr. Corbett appears to think a pile of her. He's a widower----"

"Now you speak of it, Selina, he does look at her in an admiring sort of way. If there was anything of that kind in prospect--and of course she'd lay off black sooner----"

The sun came out and streamed through the high window upon the dress in their hands. It was like a drink of wine to look at it.

"There's no denying it's a handsome thing," Jane said. "It does seem a pity to have the edges ravel. We might finish it, anyway, and sew it up in a bag with camphor."

Through the gray languor that overlay Mrs. Colquhoun's consciousness, glints of crimson began to find their way. Now the spot of color was disappearing under Mary Ann's white apron; now it was in Jane's stained hands; now it was passing from Jane to Selina.

Then she heard Dr. Corbett say, as he handed Mary Ann a small parcel, "It's the first sewing-silk I ever bought, Miss Mary Ann, and I don't know whether it's a good match, but it's crimson, anyhow, Merrill gave me his word for that"; and when Mary Ann made a warning gesture towards the bed, the faint stirring of interest almost amounted to curiosity.

"What did he mean?" she asked, after the doctor had gone. Mary Ann bent down to catch the husky whisper. "The silk--what is it for?"

"You're a little stronger to-day, aren't you, Ma? I've a secret I meant to keep till you were well; but there! Wait till I get back and I'll tell you."

Mrs. Colquhoun let her eyelids close and forgot all about it. When she opened them again, Mary Ann stood before her arrayed in the velvet dress. The radiant vision seemed part of the train of visions that had been passing before her closed eyes; but this stayed, and the smiling creases of the cheeks were substantial and firm.

Then Mary Ann fell on her knees beside the bed and made a crimson frame of her arms for the nightcapped head on the pillow.

"I'm not a bit of good at keeping a secret, Ma. Jane and Selina and me have just finished it, but you weren't to know anything about it till you got home. It was to be a surprise. And there's new covering on the parlor furniture, a handsome flower pattern, all fawn and crimson, like our dresses, and we're going to have a home-coming party. I don't want to be impatient, but I _wish_ you'd hurry up and get well."

Mrs. Colquhoun was gazing into her daughter's eyes.

"Do you really think I'm going to get well, Mary Ann?" she asked, and the wistfulness of old desire revived was in the feeble voice.

"Of course you're going to get well, dearie. Why shouldn't you?"

"It seemed kind of settled I wasn't--and it's so upsetting to stay when you're expected to go. I didn't care much."

She put up her hand weakly and stroked the velvet.

"But now--if you think so--perhaps----"

At his next visit Dr. Corbett said, "Your mother's caught her grip again, Miss Mary Ann," and Dr. Black added heartily, "And if you'll only tell us _how_ you did it, Miss Mary Ann, you'll be putting dollars in our pockets."

But the cunning of love, with all its turnings and twistings, is only half-conscious--the rest is instinct.

"I don't know that there's anything to tell, doctor," Mary Ann said slowly, wiping away a tear. "Only you might just keep a watch out and see that none of your patients are being hurried out of the world by the preparations for their own mourning. That's what was happening to Ma."

LAST YEARS WITH HENRY IRVING

BY ELLEN TERRY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

Perhaps Henry Irving and I might have gone on with Shakespeare to the end of the chapter if he had not been in such a hurry to produce "Macbeth."

We ought to have done "As You Like It" in 1888, or "The Tempest." Henry thought of both these plays. He was much attracted by the part of Caliban in "The Tempest," but, he said, "the young lovers are everything, and where are we going to find them?" He would have played Touchstone in "As You Like It," not Jacques, because Touchstone is in the vital part of the play.

He might have delayed both "Macbeth" and "Henry VIII." He ought to have added to his list of Shakespearian productions "Julius Caesar," "King John," "As You Like It," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Richard II.," and "Timon of Athens." There were reasons "against," of course. In "Julius Caesar" he wanted to play Brutus. "That's the part for the actor," he said, "because it needs acting. But the actor-manager's part is Antony. Antony scores all along the line. Now when the actor and actor-manager fight in a play, and when there is no part for you in it, I think it's wiser to leave it alone."

Every one knows when luck first began to turn against Henry Irving. It was in 1896, when he revived "Richard III." On the first night he went home, slipped on the stairs in Grafton Street, broke a bone in his knee, aggravated the hurt by walking, and had to close the theatre. It was that year, too, that his general health began to fail. For the ten years preceding his death he carried on an indomitable struggle against ill-health. Lungs and heart alike were weak. Only the spirit in that frail body remained as strong as ever. Nothing could bend it, much less break it.

But I have not come to that sad time yet.

"_Macbeth_"

"We all know when we do our best," said Henry once. "We are the only people who know." Yet he thought he did better in "Macbeth" than in "Hamlet!"

Was he right, after all?

TAKEN ON THE BEACH AT SWANSEA, WALES, IN 1906, BY EDWARD CRAIG

"WE HAVE TO PAY DEAR FOR THE FISH"

_From the collection of H. McM. Painter_]

His _view_ of Macbeth, though attacked and derided and put to shame in many quarters, is as clear to me as the sunlight itself. To me it seems as stupid to quarrel with the conception as to deny the nose on one's face. But the carrying out of the conception was unequal. Henry's imagination was sometimes his worst enemy. When I think of his Macbeth, I remember him most distinctly in the last act, after the battle, when he looked like a great famished wolf, weak with the weakness of a giant exhausted, spent as one whose exertions have been ten times as great as those of commoner men of rougher fibre and coarser strength.

"Of all men else I have avoided thee."

Once more he suggested, as he only could suggest, the power of fate. Destiny seemed to hang over him, and he knew that there was no hope, no mercy.

_The "Macbeth" Rehearsals_

FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF IN 1892 AND PRESENTED BY HIM TO THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN]

The rehearsals for "Macbeth" were very exhausting, but they were splendid to watch. In this play Henry brought his manipulation of crowds to perfection. My acting edition of the play is riddled with rough sketches by him of different groups. Artists to whom I have shown them have been astonished by the spirited impressionism of these sketches. For his "purpose" Henry seems to have been able to do anything, even to drawing and composing music. Sir Arthur Sullivan's music at first did not quite please him. He walked up and down the stage humming and showing the composer what he was going to do at certain situations. Sullivan with wonderful quickness and open-mindedness caught his meaning at once.

"Much better than mine, Irving,--much better--I'll rough it out at once!"

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS _By courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons_]

When the orchestra played the new version based on that humming of Henry's, it was exactly what he wanted!

Knowing what a task I had before me, I began to get anxious and worried about "Lady Mac." Henry wrote me such a nice letter about this:

"To-night, if possible, the last act. I want to get these great
multitudinous scenes over and then we can attack _our_ scenes....
Your sensitiveness is so acute that you must suffer sometimes. You
are not like anybody else--you see things with such lightning
quickness and unerring instinct that dull fools like myself grow
irritable and impatient sometimes. I feel confused when I'm
thinking of one thing, and disturbed by another. That's all. But I
do feel very sorry afterwards when I don't seem to heed what I so
much value....

"I think things are going well, considering the time we've been at
it, but I see so much that is wanting that it seems almost
impossible to get through properly. 'To-night commence Matthias.
If you sleep, you are lost!'"[*]

[*] A quotation from "The Bells."

FROM THE PAINTING BY SARGENT, IN THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON]

At this time we were able to be of the right use to each other. Henry could never have worked with a very strong woman. I should have deteriorated in partnership with a weaker man whose ends were less fine, whose motives were less pure. I had the taste and artistic knowledge that his upbringing had not developed in him. For years he did things to please me. Later on I gave up asking him. In "King Lear" Mrs. Nettleship made him a most beautiful cloak, but he insisted on wearing a brilliant purple velvet cloak with "glits" all over it which spoiled his beautiful make-up and his beautiful acting. Poor Mrs. Nettle was almost in tears.

"I'll never make you anything again," she said. "Never!"

_Copyrighted by Window and Grove_ _From the collection of Miss_]

_Sargent Paints Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth_

One of Mrs. Nettle's greatest triumphs was my Lady Macbeth dress, which she carried out from Mrs. Comyns Carr's design. I am glad to think it is immortalized in Sargent's picture. From the first I knew that picture was going to be splendid. In my diary for 1888 I was always writing about it:

"The picture of me is nearly finished and I think it magnificent.
The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as
Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful."

"Sargent's 'Lady Macbeth' in the New Gallery is a great success.
The picture is the sensation of the year. Of course opinions
differ about it, but there are dense crowds round it day after
day. There is talk of putting it on an exhibition by itself."

Since then it has gone over nearly the whole of Europe, and now is resting for life at the Tate Gallery. Sargent suggested by this picture all that I should have liked to be able to convey in my acting as Lady Macbeth. Of Sargent's portrait of Henry Irving, I wrote in my dairy:

"Everybody hates Sargent's head of Henry. Henry also. I like it,
but not altogether. I think it perfectly wonderfully painted and
like him, only not at his best by any means. There sat Henry and
there by his side the picture, and I could scarce tell one from
t'other. Henry looked white, with tired eyes, and holes in his
cheeks, and bored to death! And there was the picture with white
face, tired eyes, holes in the cheeks, and boredom in every line.
Sargent tried to paint his smile and gave it up."

_Copyrighted by Window and Grove_]

Sargent said to me, I remember, upon Henry Irving's first visit to the studio to see the "Macbeth" picture of me, "What a saint!" This to my mind promised well--that Sargent should see _that_ side of Henry so swiftly. So then I never left off asking Henry Irving to sit to Sargent, who wanted to paint him into the bargain, and said to me continually, "What a head!"

_Terry and Miss Frances Johnson_ _Copyrighted by Window and Grove and by W. & D. Downey_]

Again from my diary:

"Sargent's picture is almost finished, and it is really splendid.
Burne-Jones yesterday suggested two or three alterations about the
colour, which Sargent immediately adopted, but Burne-Jones raves
about the picture.

"It (Macbeth) is a most tremendous success, and the last three
days' advanced booking has been greater than ever was known, even
at the Lyceum. Yes, it is a success, and I am a success, which
amazes me, for never did I think I should be let down so easily.
Some people hate me in it; some, Henry among them, think it my
best part, and the critics differ, and discuss it hotly, which in
itself is my best success of all! Those who don't like me in it
are those who don't want and don't like to read it fresh from
Shakespeare, and who hold by the 'fiend' reading of the
character.... One of the best things ever written on the subject,
I think, is the essay of J. Comyns Carr. That is as hotly
discussed as the new Lady Mac--all the best people agreeing with
it. Oh dear! It is an exciting time!"

_Copyrighted by Window and Grove_]

From a letter I wrote to my daughter who was in Germany at the time:

"I wish you could see my dresses. They are superb, especially the
first one: green beetles in it, and such a cloak! The photographs
give no idea of it at all, for it is in colour that it is so
splendid. The dark red hair is fine. The whole thing is
Rossetti--rich stained-glass effects. I play some of it well, but
of course I don't do what I want to do yet. Meanwhile I shall not
budge an inch in the reading of it, for that I know is right. Oh,
it's fun, but it's precious hard work, for I by no means make her
a gentle lovable woman' as some of 'em say. That's all pickles.
She was nothing of the sort, although she was _not_ a fiend, and
_did_ love her husband. I have to what is vulgarly called 'sweat
at it,' each night."

_Burne-Jones at "Macbeth"_

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON HER LAST TOUR IN AMERICA _Copyrighted, 1907 by Helen Lohman_]

The few people who liked my Lady Macbeth, liked it very much. I hope I am not vain to quote this letter from Lady Pollock:

"... Burne-Jones has been with me this afternoon: he was at
'Macbeth' last night, and you filled his whole soul with your
beauty and your poetry.... He says you were a great Scandinavian
queen, that your presence, your voice, your movement, made a
marvelously poetic harmony, that your dress was grandly imagined
and grandly worn--and that he cannot criticise--he can only
remember."

FROM A PORTRAIT GIVEN BY HIM TO MISS EVELYN SMALLEY IN 1896]

But Burne-Jones by this time had become one of our most ardent admirers, and was prejudiced in my favour because my acting appealed to his _eye_. Still the drama is for the eye as well as for the ear and the mind.

"_The Dead Heart_"

Very early I learned that one had best be ambitious merely to please oneself in one's work a little--quietly I coupled with this the reflection that one "gets nothing for nothing, and damned little for sixpence!"

Here I was in the very noonday of my life, fresh from Lady Macbeth and still young enough to play Rosalind, suddenly called upon to play a rather uninteresting mother in "The Dead Heart." However, my son Teddy made his first appearance in it, and had such a big success that I soon forgot that for me the play was rather "small beer."

It had been done before, of course, by Benjamin Webster and George Vining. Henry engaged Bancroft for the Abbe, a part of quite as much importance as his own. It was only a melodrama, but Henry could always invest a melodrama with life, beauty, interest, mystery, by his methods of production.

"I'm full of French Revolution," he wrote to me when he was
preparing the play for rehearsal, "and could pass an examination.
In our play at the taking of the Bastille, we must have a starving
crowd--hungry, eager, cadaverous faces. If that can be well
carried out, the effect will be very terrible, and the contrast to
the other crowd (the red and fat crowd--the blood-gorged ones who
look as if they'd been all drinking wine--_red_ wine, as Dickens
says) would be striking.... It's tiresome stuff to read, because
it depends so much on situations. I have been touching the book
up, though, and improved it here and there, I think.

"A letter this morning from the illustrious ---- offering me his
prompt book to look at.... I think I shall borrow the treasure,
why not? Of course he will say that he has produced the play and
all that sort of thing, but what does that matter, if one can
only get one hint out of it?

"The longer we live, the more we see that if we only do our own
work thoroughly well, we can be independent of everything else or
anything that may be said....

"I see in Landry a great deal of Manette--that same vacant gaze
into years gone by when he crouched in his dungeon nursing his
wrongs....

"I shall send you another book soon to put any of your alterations
and additions in--I've added a lot of little things with a few
lines for you--very good, I think, though I say it as shouldn't--I
know you'll laugh! They are perhaps not startlingly original, but
better than the original, anyhow! Here they are--last act!

"'Ah, Robert, pity me. By the recollections of our youth, I
implore you to save my boy! (_Now_ for 'em!)

"'If my voice recalls a tone that ever fell sweetly upon your ear,
have pity on me! If the past is not a blank, if you once loved,
have pity on me!' (Bravo!)

"Now I call that very good, and if the 'If' and the 'pity's' don't
bring down the house, well it's a pity! I pity the pittites.

"... I've just been copying out my part in an account book--a
little more handy to put into one's pocket. It's really very
short, but difficult to act, though, and so is yours. I like this
'piling up' sort of acting, and I am sure you will, when you play
the part. It's restful. 'The Bells' is that sort of thing."

The crafty old Henry! All this was to put me in conceit with my part!

THE PART PLAYED BY HER AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON IN 1902 _Copyrighted by Window and Grove_]

_A Letter From Burne-Jones_

Many people put me in conceit with my son, including dear Burne-Jones, with his splendid gift of impulsive enthusiasm:

"The Grange, West Kensington, W.

"Sunday.

"Most dear Lady:

"I thought all went wonderfully last night--and no sign could I
see of hitch or difficulty--and as for your boy, he looked a
lovely little gentleman--and in his cups was perfect, not
overdoing by the least touch a part always perilously easy to
overdo. I too had the impertinence to be a bit nervous for you
about him--but not when he appeared--so altogether I was quite
happy.

"... Irving was very noble--I thought I had never seen his face
so beatified before--no, that isn't the word, and to hunt for
the right one would be so like judicious criticism that I
won't--exalted and splendid it was--and you were you--YOU--and so
all was well. I rather wanted more shouting and distant roar in
the Bastille scene--since the walls fell, like Jericho, by noise,
a good, dreadful growl always going on would have helped, I
thought--and that was the only point where I missed anything.

"And I was very glad you got your boy back again and that Mr.
Irving was ready to have his head cut off for you, so it had what
I call a good ending, and I am in bright spirits to-day, and
ever,

"Your real friend,

"E. B. J.

"I would come and growl gladly."

There were terrible strikes all over England when we were playing "The Dead Heart." I could not help sympathising with the strikers; yet reading all about the French Revolution as I did then, I can't understand how the French nation can be proud of it when one remembers how they butchered their own great men, the leaders of the movement--Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, and the others. My man is Camille Desmoulins. I just love him.

"_Ravenswood_"

Plays adapted from novels are always unsatisfactory. A whole story cannot be conveyed in three hours, and every reader of the story looks for something not in the play. Wills took from "The Vicar of Wakefield" an episode and did it right well, but there was no _episode_ in "The Bride of Lammermoor" for Merivale to take. He tried to traverse the whole ground and failed. But he gave me some lovely things to do in Lucy Ashton. I had to lose my poor wits, as in Ophelia, in the last act, and with hardly a word to say I was able to make an effect. The love scene at the well I did nicely, too.

Seymour Lucas designed splendid dresses for this play. My "Ravenswood" riding dress set a fashion in ladies' coats for quite a long time. Mine was copied by Mr. Lucas from a leather coat of Lord Mohun. He is said to have had it on when he was killed. At any rate there was a large stab in the back of the coat, and a blood-stain.

"_Nance Oldfield_"

This was my first speculation in play-buying! I saw it acted and thought I could do something with it. Henry would not buy it, so I did. He let me do it first in front of a revival of "The Corsican Brothers," in 1891. It was a great success, although my son and I did not know a word on the first night and had our parts written out and pinned all over the furniture! Dear old Mr. Howe wrote to me that Teddy's performance was "more than creditable; it was exceedingly good and full of character, and with your own charming performance, the piece was a great success." Since 1891 I must have played "Nance Oldfield" hundreds of times, but I never had an Alexander Oldworthy so good as my own son, although such talented young actors as Martin Harvey, Laurence Irving, and, more recently, Harcourt Williams, have all played it with me.

"_Henry VIII._"

Henry's pride as Cardinal Wolsey seemed to eat him. How wonderful he looked (though not fat and self-indulgent like the pictures of the real Wolsey) in his flame-coloured robes! He had the silk dyed specially by the dyers to the Cardinals' College in Rome. Seymour Lucas designed the clothes. It was a magnificent production, but not very interesting to me. I played Katherine much better ten years later at Stratford-on-Avon at the Shakespeare Memorial Festival. I was stronger then, and more mature. This letter from Burne-Jones about "Henry VIII." and Henry Irving is delightful. I will not keep it to myself any longer:

"My dear Lady,

"We went last night to the play (at my Theatre) to see 'Henry
VIII.' Margaret and Mackail and I. It was delicious to go out
again and see mankind, after such evil days. How kind they were to
me no words can say--I went in at a private door and then into a
cosy box and back the same way, swiftly, and am marvellously the
better for the adventure. No you, alas!

"I have written to Mr. Irving just to thank him for his great
kindness in making the path of pleasure so easy, for I go
tremblingly at present. But I could not say to him what I thought
of the Cardinal--a sort of shame keeps one from saying to an
artist what one thinks of his work--but to you I can say how nobly
he warmed up the story of the old religion to my exacting mind in
that impersonation. I shall think always of dying monarchy in his
Charles--and always of dying hierarchy in his Wolsey. How
Protestant and dull all grew when that noble type had gone!

"I can't go to Church till red cardinals come back (and may they
be of exactly that red), nor to Court till trumpets and banners
come back--nor to evening parties till the dances are like that
dance. What a lovely young Queen has been found. But there was no
you.... Perhaps it was as well. I couldn't have you slighted even
in a play, and put aside. When I go back to see you as I soon
will, it will be easier. Mr. Irving let me know you would not act;
and proposed that I should go later on--wasn't that like him? So I
sat with my children and was right happy, and as usual the streets
looked dirty and all the people muddy and black as we came away.
Please not to answer this stuff.

"Ever yours aff'ly,

"E. B. J.

"I wish that Cardinal could have been made Pope, and sat with his
foot on the Earl of Surrey's neck. Also I wish to be a Cardinal,
but then I sometimes want to be a pirate. We can't have all we
want.

"Your boy was very kind--I thought the race of young men who are
polite and attentive to old fading ones had passed away with
antique pageants--but it isn't so."

When the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire gave the famous fancy-dress ball at Devonshire House, they attended it in the robes which had appealed so strongly to Burne-Jones's imaginative eye. I was told by one who was present at this ball that, as the Cardinal swept up the staircase, his long train held magnificently over his arm, a sudden wave of reality seemed to sweep upstairs with him, and reduce to the pettiest make-believe all the aristocratic masquerade that surrounded him.

I renewed my acquaintance with "Henry VIII" in 1902, when I played Queen Katherine for Mr. Benson during the Shakespeare Memorial performances in April. I was pretty miserable at the time--the Lyceum reign was dying, and taking an unconscionably long time about it, which made the position all the more difficult. Henry Irving was reviving "Faust"--a wise step, as it had been his biggest "money-maker"--and it was a question whether I could play Margaret. There are some young parts that the actress can still play when she is no longer young: Beatrice, Portia, and many others come to mind. But I think that when the character is that of a young girl, the betrayal of whose innocence is the main theme of the play, no amount of skill on the part of the actress can make up for the loss of youth.

Suggestions were thrown out to me (not by Henry Irving, but by others concerned) that, although I was too old for Margaret, I might play _Martha_! Well! well! I didn't quite see _that_. So I redeemed a promise given in jest at the Lyceum to Frank Benson twenty years earlier, and went off to Stratford-upon-Avon to play in "Henry VIII."

I played Katherine on Shakespeare's Birthday--such a lovely day, bright and sunny and warm. The performance went finely--and I made a little speech afterwards which was quite a success.

During these pleasant days at Stratford, I went about in between the performances of "Henry VIII," which was, I think, given three times a week for three weeks, seeing the lovely country and lovely friends who live there. A visit to Broadway and to beautiful Madame de Navarro (Mary Anderson), was particularly delightful. To see her looking so handsome, robust, fresh, so happy in her beautiful home, gave me the keenest pleasure. I also went to Stanways, the Elchos' home--a fascinating place. Lady Elcho showed me all over it, and she was not the least lovely thing in it.

In Stratford I was rebuked by the permanent inhabitants for being kind to a little boy in professionally ragged clothing who made me, as he has made hundreds of others, listen to a long made-up history of Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice," "Julius Caesar," and other things--the most hopeless mix! The inhabitants assured me that the boy was a little rascal, who begged and extorted money from visitors by worrying them with his recitation until they paid him to leave them alone.

Long before I knew that the child was such a reprobate, I had given him a pass to the gallery and a Temple Shakespeare! I derived such pleasure from his version of the "Mercy" speech from the "Merchant of Venice" that I still think he was ill-paid!

The quality of mercy is not strange
It droppeth as _the_ gentle rain from 'Eaven
Upon _the_ place beneath; it is twicet bless.
It blesseth in that gives and in that takes
It is in the mightiest--in the mightiest
It becomes the throned monuk better than its crownd.
It's an appribute to God inself
It is in the thorny 'earts of Kings
But not in the fit and dread of kings.

I asked the boy what he meant to be when he was a man. He answered with decision: "A reciterer."

I also asked him what he liked best in the play.

"When the blind went up and down and you smiled," he replied--surely a naive compliment to my way of "taking a call!" Further pressed, he volunteered: "When you lay on the bed and died to please the angels."

_Other Plays_

I had exactly ten years more with Henry Irving after "Henry VIII." During that time we did "King Lear," "Becket," "King Arthur," "Cymbeline," "Madame Sans-Gene," "Peter the Great," and "The Medicine Man," I feel too near to these productions to write about them. But a time will come. The first night of "Cymbeline" I felt almost dead. Nothing seemed right. "Everything is so slow, so slow," I wrote in my diary. "I don't feel a bit inspired, only dull and hide-bound." Yet Imogen was, I think, the _only_ inspired performance of these later years. On the first night of "Sans-Gene" I acted _courageously_ and fairly well. Everyone seemed to be delighted. The old Duke of Cambridge patted, or rather, _thumped_ me on the shoulder and said kindly: "Ah, my dear, _you_ can act!" Henry quite effaced me in his wonderful sketch of Napoleon. "It seems to me some nights," I wrote in my diary at the time, "as if I were watching Napoleon trying to imitate H. I., and I find myself immensely interested and amused in the watching."

"The Medicine Man" was, in my opinion, our only _quite_ unworthy production and I wrote in my diary: "If 'Manfred' and a few such plays are to succeed this, I simply must do something else."

But I did not! I stayed on, as everyone knows, when the Lyceum as a personal enterprise of Henry's was no more, when the farcical Lyceum Syndicate took over the theatre. I played a wretched part in "Robespierre," and refused L12,000 to go to America with Henry in "Dante."

In these days Henry Irving was a changed man. He gave the whole thing up--as a producer, I mean. As an actor he worked as faithfully as ever. Henley's stoical lines might have been written of him as he was in those last days:

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbow'd.

Henry Irving did not treat me badly. I did not treat him badly. He revived "Faust" and produced "Dante." I would have liked to stay with him to the end of the chapter, but I could not act in either of these plays. But we never quarrelled. Our long partnership dissolved naturally. It was all very sad, but it could not be helped.

THE LOST MOTHER

BY BLANCHE M. KELLY

DECORATIONS BY LESTER RALPH

... among the rocks one of the sea women combing her long hair,
and if he can creep up to her unbeknownst, and steal away from her
her "cubuleen driuth," which is a kind of small cap the merrows do
be wearing, she can never go back under the sea any more at all,
but must follow his bidding while ever he has it in his keeping.

O Scarlet hunter, riding past,
O hunter, do not ride so fast,
But tell me where's my mother?--
"Nay, child, why dost thou ask of me?
Safe by the hearth should mothers be,
And thine like any other."
--While I was playing on the floor
Deep in a hollow near the door
I found a shining cap laid by.
My mother gave a piercing cry,
And snatched it up and fled away....
Though I have sought her all the day,
I cannot find my mother.--

--O woman with the milking stool,
Standing among the grasses cool,
Hast thou not seen my mother?--
"What like is thy mother, lad?"
--A striped petticoat she had,
Her snooded hair is soft as silk,
She's whiter in the face than milk,
My lost, sweet mother!--
"I saw a poor mad thing go down
By yonder highway to the town,
I saw none other.
But, oh, her hair was streaming wild,
Sure, frenzy was upon her, child,
And she was not thy mother."

--O friar, in thy long rough gown,
Say in what corner of the town
I'll find my mother.--
"What is thy mother's name, poor boy?"
--My father always called her Joy.--
"It hath the ring of Heathenesse,
But to all creatures in distress
Lord Christ is Brother.
In the church-yard an hour ago
I saw a witch-girl crouching low,
But oh, she fell to weeping sore
For that she feared the cross I wore.
I'll dry thy tears and lead thee home,
Good mothers have no wish to roam."
--Nay, I must find my mother.--

--O fisher, coming in from sea,
Lay by the oar and answer me,
O hast thou seen my mother?--
"Nay, but I saw, upon my life,
'Mong yonder rocks a merrow wife
With long locks gleaming in the sun.
She saw the billows shoreward run,
She heard the splashing of my oar,
Wildly she glanced along the shore,
She flung her foam-white arms on high,
She cried a weird and wailing cry,
And leaped and vanished in the sea.
I crossed the brow and breast of me,
And thanked the Maker of my life
That I've a christened maid to wife."

PATSY MORAN

THE BOOK AND ITS COVERS

BY ARTHUR SULLIVAN HOFFMAN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAITLAND THOMAS

"Adventure, is it?" said Patsy, pushing his empty glass away from him. "What happened me last night would be makin' a adventure seem like grass growin' in a cimitery!"

From the other side of the table, in their own particular corner of the back room at Devinsky's Place on the Upper East Side, Tim regarded his friend with characteristic stolidity and replied with a grunt of interrogatory interest. Patsy seldom needed urging in the matter of talking about himself.

"It all come of Mike O'Hara's owin' me three dollars," he continued. "Sure, the good heart of me keeps me brains busy rescuin' me from trouble. Mike is after keepin' a boat-house over on the North River near Spuytendivil, and seein' no other way I wint up to see him early last evenin' and took wan of his boats out for five hours, though it's me hates floatin' about in a bunch of boards and workin' to do it.

"Twas me intention to work up the river with the tide and thin cheat O'Hara by gittin' out and settin' on the shore. Which I done, tyin' me boat to wan of thim skinny little private docks over on the Jersey shore beyant Fort Lee. And thin, Tim, it come on me to climb clear up thim Palisades, which was amazin' unnatural and the first of the queer things that happened me the night.

"It was hard climbin' by a path what was mostly growed up with vines, and whin I come to the top they wasn't anny too much daylight left to me, and the place was lonely as a Dimmycrat. They was lights over across the river in New York--och, but thim lights was far off!--but Jersey was just wan hunk of nuthin', with some ghosty trees in the front of it. Excipt for a tug or a ferry whistlin' now and thin, they was niver a sound but the hummin' of ivry wan of all the mosquities that iver was, barrin' thim as was tryin' was they a chanct to kiss each other by borin' through me from both sides at wanct.

"It was no place for usin' up boat-rint, but me shoes was full of gravel and, seein' the ruins of a house a bit off, I wint over to it to set down and take thim off comfortable. It's the fine large house it must 'a' been wanct, but they'd been a fire in it, and 'twas only the walls of it was standin', with wan big second-story room stickin' up big and darkish in a corner of it. Raymimber that wan second-story room in your mind. It was all a bit creepy-like, and I wint at me shoes in a hurry.

"I had the both of thim off and shakin' thim, rubbin' me sock-feet together to keep some of thim mosquities away, whin all to wanct I heard something walkin'. Just as I was, I turned mesilf to stone, with me feet up off the ground and a empty shoe held out in the air afore me in each hand, balancin' mesilf wonderful.

"The steps come nearer. 'They ain't anny ghost makes that much noise,' I says, niver losin' me nerve or movin' a inch annywheres. 'Though ye can't niver tell about ghosts.' And just thin a little man come strollin' round the corner of a wall and stood lookin' at me. It wasn't so dark yet but what I could be makin' out what little they was of him, and if iver wan of thim dudes in the newspaper funny-pictures come to life, here he was, only thim funny-pictures must 'a' been drawed by ammyteurs. I misdoubted was he real, but if he was, they was money on him, and if they was money on him, it would come off of him easy-like, and I could be namin' the man would spend it. Thin I raymimbered I was still holdin' up me shoes and me feet, like I was settin' on the point of a church-steeple, for his mouth was hangin' open like I was the first wan he iver seen, and belike I was.

"'Pardon me,' he says, 'but why do ye do that?' says he, singin' it off like a Englishman.

"'Whisht!' I says, not thinkin' of anny answer yet and cursin' the stone for bein' so hard.

"'But, me good man,' says he, payin' no attention, '_why_ are ye holdin' thim shoes up in the air?'

"'Whisht!' says I. 'Why not?'

"'Why not?' says he, gaspin'.

"'Ye said "why" the other time,' I says. 'Which do ye mean?'

"'Which what?' says he, weak-like.

"'Either wan of thim,' says I; 'sure, all what's is the same to me. But run along with ye now and don't be disturbin' me; it's workin' a charm I am. Unless ye would be helpin' me hold these shoes steady,' I adds enticin', bein' wishful of gittin' him close enough to grab him.

"'Hold thim shoes steady?' says he.

"'Hold thim shoes steady,' says I.

"'A charm?' says he.

"'Yis,' says I, 'a charm. And would ye mind not usin' me own conversation over ag'in so soon, sor? I've heard tell 'twas bad luck, and annyways, it's nervous it's makin' me.'

"'Do you _have_ to set that way?' says he, comin' closer.

"'Indeed and I do,' I says, 'though it's mortal wearin'. But whin ye are makin'--' and just there I makes a grab at him. But, och, blathers, if his brains was slow, his feet was quick, and away he wint, me after him, divil-racketty.

"Thim ruins was right on the edge of the Palisades, and 'twas me endeavor to keep him atween me and the cliff so he couldn't make for the open. Up and down we wint, scramblin', running and crawlin', first to wan ind of thim crumblin' walls and thin back ag'in to the other, me always hemmin' him in and headin' him off, but niver quite catchin' him, and thim piles of loose brick hurtin' me sock-feet cruel, me havin' dropped me shoes whin I tried to grab him. They wasn't much light left, but all to wanct I saw him goin' right up in the air, and whin I come up he was just climbin' over the edge of that wan second-story room. Faith, for a minute I was thinkin' he _was_ a ghost, but he hadn't no more than landed whin he begun draggin' up after him a long board with slats nailed to it what some boys must 'a' left there for a ladder. Me hand just missed the ind of it, me foot slippin' on top a pile of bricks and rollin' me down over the sharp corners of thim.