uite manfully in her duel with Tybalt; the only hitch
in the usual "business" of the part was between herself and me, and I do
not imagine the public, for one night, were much aggrieved by the
omission of the usual clap-trap performance (part of Garrick's
interpolation, which indeed belongs to the original story, but which
Shakespeare's true poet's sense had discarded) of Romeo's plucking
Juliet up from her bier and rushing with her, still stiff and motionless
in her death-trance, down to the foot-lights. This feat Miss Tree
insisted upon attempting with me, and I as stoutly resisted all her
entreaties to let her do so. I was a very slender-looking girl, but very
heavy for all that. (A friend of mine, on my first voyage to America,
lifting me from a small height, set me down upon the deck, exclaiming,
"Oh, you solid little lady!" and my cousin, John Mason, the first time
he acted Romeo with me, though a very powerful, muscular young man,
whispered to me as he carried my corpse down the stage with a fine
semblance of frenzy, "Jove, Fanny, you are a lift!") Finding that all
argument and remonstrance was unavailing, and that Miss Tree, though by
no means other than a good friend and fellow-worker of mine, was bent
upon performing this gymnastic feat, I said at last, "If you attempt to
lift or carry me down the stage, I will kick and scream till you set me
down," which ended the controversy. I do not know whether she believed
me, but she did not venture upon the experiment.

I am reminded by this recollection of my pleasant professional
fellowship with Miss Ellen Tree of a curious instance of the
unprincipled, flagrant recklessness with which scandalous gossip is
received and circulated in what calls itself the best English society.

In Mr. Charles Greville's "Memoirs," he makes a statement that Miss Tree
was never engaged at Covent Garden. The play-bills and the newspapers of
the day abundantly contradicted this assertion (at the time he entered
it in his diary), and, of course, the discreditable motive assigned for
the _fact_.

I cannot help thinking that, had Mr. Greville lived, much of the
voluminous record he kept of persons and events would have been withheld
from publication. He told me, not long before his death, that he had no
recollection whatever of the contents of the earlier volumes of his MS.
journal which he had lent me to read; and it is infinitely to be
regretted, if he did not look over them before they