enchanting Portia," she writes to me
in response to a photograph that I had sent her, "but the
photographers don't see you as you are, and have not the poetry in
them to do you justice.... You were especially admirable in the
Casket Scene. You kept your by-play quieter, and it gained in
effect from the addition of repose--and I rejoiced that you did not
kneel to Bassanio at 'My Lord, my governor, my King.' I used to
feel that too much like worship from any girl to her affianced, and
Portia's position being one of command, I should doubt the
possibility of such an action...."

I think I received more letters about my Portia than about all my other
parts put together. Many of them came from university men. One old
playgoer wrote to tell me that he liked me better than my former
instructress, Mrs. Charles Kean. "She mouthed it as she did most
things.... She was not real--a staid, sentimental 'Anglaise,' and more
than a little stiffly pokerish."

Henry Irving's Shylock was generally conceded to be full of talent and
reality, but some of his critics could not resist saying that this was
_not_ the Jew that Shakespeare drew! Now, who is in a position to say
what is the Jew that Shakespeare drew? I think Henry Irving knew as
well as most! Nay, I am sure that in his age he was the only person
able to decide.

Some said his Shylock was intellectual, and appealed more to the
intellect of his audiences than to their emotions. Surely this is
talking for the sake of talking. I recall so many things that touched
people to the heart! For absolute pathos, achieved by absolute
simplicity of means, I never saw anything in the theater to compare with
his Shylock's return home over the bridge to his deserted house after
Jessica's flight.

A younger actor, producing "The Merchant of Venice" in recent years,
asked Irving if he might borrow this bit of business. "By all means,"
said Henry. "With great pleasure."

"Then, why didn't you do it?" inquired my daughter bluntly when the
actor was telling us how kind and courteous Henry had been in allowing
him to use his stroke of invention.

"What do you mean?" asked the astonished actor.

My daughter told him that Henry had dropped the curtain on a stage full
of noise, and light, and revelry. When it went up again the stage was
empty, desolate, with no light but a pale moon, and all sounds of life
at a great distance--and then over the bridge ca