r it took all the
self-consciousness out of me to start with. To end with, I thought it
capital fun, and enjoyed burlesque as much as Shakespeare.

What was a stock company? I forget that in these days the question may
be asked in all good faith, and that it is necessary to answer it. Well,
then, a stock company was a company of actors and actresses brought
together by the manager of a provincial theater to support a leading
actor or actress--"a star"--from London. When Edmund Kean, the Kembles,
Macready, or Mrs. Siddons visited provincial towns, these companies were
ready to support them in Shakespeare. They were also ready to play
burlesque, farce, and comedy to fill out the bill. Sometimes the "stars"
would come for a whole season; if their magnitude were of the first
order, for only one night. Sometimes they would rehearse with the stock
company, sometimes they wouldn't. There is a story of a manager visiting
Edmund Kean at his hotel on his arrival in a small provincial town, and
asking the great actor when he would rehearse.

"Rehearse! I'm not going to rehearse--I'm going to sleep!"

"Have you any instructions?"

"Instructions! No! Tell 'em to keep at a long arm's length away from me
and do their d----d worst!"

At Bristol, where I joined Mr. J.H. Chute's stock company in 1861, we
had no experience of that kind, perhaps because there was no Kean alive
to give it to us. And I don't think that our "worst" would have been so
very bad. Mr. Chute, who had married Macready's half-sister, was a
splendid manager, and he contrived to gather round him a company which
was something more than "sound."

Several of its members distinguished themselves greatly in after years.
Among these I may mention Miss Marie Wilton (now Lady Bancroft) and
Miss Madge Robertson (now Mrs. Kendal).

Lady Bancroft had left the company before I joined it, but Mrs. Kendal
was there, and so was Miss Henrietta Hodson (afterwards Mrs.
Labouchere). I was much struck at that time by Mrs. Kendal's singing.
Her voice was beautiful. As an example of how anything can be twisted to
make mischief, I may quote here an absurd tarradiddle about Mrs. Kendal
never forgetting in after years that in the Bristol stock company she
had to play the singing fairy to my Titania in "A Midsummer Night's
Dream." The simple fact, of course, was that she had the best voice in
the company, and was of such infinite value in singing parts that no
manager in his senses wou