is not to be
compared with it!"

Between Mrs. Seymour and Charles Reade existed a friendship of that rare
sort about which it is easy for people who are not at all rare,
unfortunately, to say ill-natured things. Charles Reade worshiped Laura
Seymour, and she understood him and sympathized with his work and his
whims. She died before he did, and he never got over it. The great
success of one of his last plays, "Drink," an adaptation from the
French, in which Charles Warner is still thrilling audiences to this
day, meant nothing to him because she was not alive to share it. The "In
Memoriam" which he had inscribed over her grave is characteristic of the
man, the woman, and their friendship:

HERE LIES THE GREAT HEART OF
LAURA SEYMOUR

I liked Mrs. Seymour so much that I was hurt when I found that she had
instructed Charles Reade to tell Nelly Terry "not to paint her face" in
the daytime, and I was young enough to enjoy revenging myself in my own
way. We used to play childish games at Charles Reade's house sometimes,
and with "Follow my leader" came my opportunity. I asked for a basin of
water and a towel and scrubbed my face with a significant thoroughness.
The rules of the game meant that everyone had to follow my example! When
I had dried my face I powdered it, and then darkened my eyebrows. I
wished to be quite frank about the harmless little bit of artifice which
Mrs. Seymour had exaggerated into a crime. She was now hoist with her
own petard, for, being heavily made up, she could not and would not
follow the leader. After this Charles Reade acquitted me of the use of
"pigments red," but he still kept up a campaign against "Chalky," as he
humorously christened my powder-puff. "Don't be pig-headed, love," he
wrote to me once; "it is because Chalky does not improve you that I
forbid it. Trust unprejudiced and friendly eyes and drop it altogether."

Although Mrs. Seymour was naturally prejudiced where Charles Reade's
work was concerned, she only spoke the truth, pardonably exaggerated,
about the part of Philippa Chester. I know no part which is a patch on
it for effectiveness; yet there is little in it of the stuff which
endures. The play itself was too unbusiness like ever to become a
classic.

Not for years afterwards did I find out that I was not the "first
choice" for Portia. The Bancrofts had tried the Kendals first, with the
idea of making a double engagement; but the negotiations failed. Perhaps
t