xious to do my best with
every part that came in my way--a quality which with me has been a good
substitute for ambition. I was just dreaming of and aspiring after
another world, a world full of pictures and music and gentle, artistic
people with quiet voices and elegant manners. The reality of such a
world was Little Holland House, the home of Mr. Watts.

So I confess quite frankly that I did not appreciate until it was too
late, my advantages in serving at the Haymarket with comrades who were
the most surpassingly fine actors and actresses in old comedy that I
have ever known. There were Mr. Buckstone, the Chippendales, Mr.
Compton, Mr. Farren. They one and all thoroughly understood Sheridan.
Their bows, their curtseys, their grand manner, the indefinable _style_
which they brought to their task were something to see. We shall never
know their like again, and the smoothest old-comedy acting of this age
seems rough in comparison. Of course, we suffer more with every fresh
decade that separates us from Sheridan. As he gets farther and farther
away, the traditions of the performances which he conducted become paler
and paler. Mr. Chippendale knew these traditions backwards. He might
even have known Sheridan himself. Charles Reade's mother did know him,
and sat on the stage with him while he rehearsed "The School for
Scandal" with Mrs. Abingdon, the original Lady Teazle in the part.

Mrs. Abingdon, according to Charles Reade, who told the story, had just
delivered the line, "How dare you abuse my relations?" when Sheridan
stopped the rehearsal.

"No, no, that won't do at all! It mustn't be _pettish_. That's
shallow--shallow. You must go up stage with, 'You are just what my
cousin Sophy said you would be,' and then turn and sweep down on him
like a volcano. 'You are a great bear to abuse my relations! How _dare_
you abuse my relations!'"

I want to refrain, in telling the story of my life, from praising the
past at the expense of the present. It is at best the act of a fogey and
always an easy thing to do, as there are so few people who can
contradict one. Yet even the fear of joining hands with the people who
like every country but their own, and every age except that in which
they live, shall not deter me from saying that although I have seen
many improvements in actors and acting since I was at the Haymarket, I
have never seen artificial comedy acted as it was acted there.

Not that I was much good at it myself. I