Peg, and that I ought to have known it. I _didn't_ know, as a
matter of fact, but perhaps it was stupid of me. There was more of Tom
Taylor in Mabel Vane.

I played five parts in all at the Prince of Wales's, and I think I may
claim that the Bancrofts found me a _useful_ actress--ever the dull
height of my ambition! They wanted Byron--the author of "Our Boys"--to
write me a part in the new play, which they had ordered from him, but
when "Wrinkles" turned up there was no part which they felt they could
offer me, and I think Coghlan was also not included in the cast. At any
rate, he was free to take me to see Henry Irving act. Coghlan was always
raving about Irving at this time. He said that one evening spent in
watching him act was the best education an actor could have. Seeing
other people act, even if they are not Irvings, is always an education
to us. I have never been to a theater yet without learning something. It
must have been in the spring of 1876 that I received this note:

"Will you come in our box on Tuesday for Queen Mary? Ever yours,

"CHARLES T. COGHLAN.

"P.S.--I am afraid that they will soon have to smooth their wrinkled
front of the P. of W. Alas! Helas! Ah, me!"

This postscript, I think, must have referred to the approaching
withdrawal of "Wrinkles" from the Prince of Wales's, and the return of
Coghlan and myself to the cast.

Meanwhile, we went to see Irving's King Philip.

Well, I can only say that he never did anything better to the day of his
death. Never shall I forget his expression and manner when Miss Bateman,
as Queen Mary (she was _very_ good, by the way), was pouring out her
heart to him. The horrid, dead look, the cruel unresponsiveness, the
indifference of the creature! While the poor woman protested and wept,
he went on polishing up his ring! Then the tone in which he asked:

"Is dinner ready?"

It was the perfection of quiet malignity and cruelty.

The extraordinary advance that he had made since the days when we had
acted together at the Queen's Theater did not occur to me. I was just
spellbound by a study in cruelty, which seemed to me a triumphant
assertion of the power of the actor to create as well as to interpret,
for Tennyson never suggested half what Henry Irving did.

We talk of progress, improvement, and advance; but when I think of Henry
Irving's Philip, I begin to wonder if Oscar Wilde was not profound as
well as witty when he said that a great artist moves in a