he was at the highest point of his fame, I watched him
one day in the train--always a delightful occupation, for his face
provided many pictures a minute--and being struck by a curious look,
half puzzled, half despairing, asked him what he was thinking about.

"I was thinking," he answered slowly, "how strange it is that I should
have made the reputation I have as an actor, with nothing to help
me--with no equipment. My legs, my voice--everything has been against
me. For an actor who can't walk, can't talk, and has no face to speak
of, I've done pretty well."

And I, looking at that splendid head, those wonderful hands, the whole
strange beauty of him, thought, "Ah, you little know!"

PORTIA

1875

The brilliant story of the Bancroft management of the old Prince of
Wales's Theater was more familiar twenty years back than it is now. I
think that few of the youngest playgoers who point out, on the first
nights of important productions, a remarkably striking figure of a man
with erect carriage, white hair, and flashing dark eyes--a man whose
eye-glass, manners, and clothes all suggest Thackeray and Major
Pendennis, in spite of his success in keeping abreast of everything
modern--few playgoers, I say, who point this man out as Sir Squire
Bancroft could give any adequate account of what he did for the English
theater in the 'seventies. Nor do the public who see an elegant little
lady starting for a drive from a certain house in Berkeley Square
realize that this is Marie Wilton, afterward Mrs. Bancroft, now Lady
Bancroft, the comedienne who created the heroines of Tom Robertson, and,
with her husband, brought what is called the cup-and-saucer drama to
absolute perfection.

We players know quite well and accept with philosophy the fact that when
we have done we are forgotten. We are sometimes told that we live too
much in the public eye and enjoy too much public favor and attention;
but at least we make up for it by leaving no trace of our short and
merry reign behind us when it is over!

I have never, even in Paris, seen anything more admirable than the
ensemble of the Bancroft productions. Every part in the domestic
comedies, the presentation of which, up to 1875, they had made their
policy, was played with such point and finish that the more rough,
uneven, and emotional acting of the present day has not produced
anything so good in the same line. The Prince of Wales's Theater was the
most fashionable in London,