I was glad to show him up a bit!

"The Vice-Chancellor made a most lovely speech after the
address--an eloquent and splendid tribute to the stage.

"Bourchier presented the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a
young man in a greater funk--because, I suppose, he had imitated me
so often!

"From the address:

"'We have watched with keen and enthusiastic interest the fine
intellectual quality of all these representations from Hamlet to
Mephistopheles with which you have enriched the contemporary stage.
To your influence we owe deeper knowledge and more reverent study
of the master mind of Shakespeare.'

"All very nice indeed!"

I never cared much for Henry's Mephistopheles--a twopence colored part,
anyway. Of course he had his moments--he had them in every part--but
they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he wrote in the
student's book, "Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." He never
looked at the book, and the nature of the _spirit_ appeared suddenly in
a most uncanny fashion. Another was in the Spinning-wheel Scene when
Faust defies Mephistopheles, and he silences him with, "_I am a
spirit_." Henry looked to grow a gigantic height--to hover over the
ground instead of walking on it. It was terrifying.

I made valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My
instructor was Mr. Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin, had
recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the North of England.
I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel in the
opera, and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always broke, and
at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent; but at least I
worked my wheel right, and gave an impression that I could spin my pound
of thread a day with the best.

Two operatic stars did me the honor to copy my Margaret dress--Madame
Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many
mothers who took their daughters to see the opera of "Faust" would not
bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was Princess
Mary of Teck, a constant patron of most of our plays.

Other people "missed the music." The popularity of an opera will often
kill a play, although the play may have existed before the music was
ever thought of. The Lyceum "Faust" held its own against Gounod. I liked
our incidental music to the action much better. It was taken from many
d