adventure. No
YOU, alas!

"I have written to Mr. Irving just to thank him for his great kindness
in making the path of pleasure so easy, for I go tremblingly at present.
But I could not say to him what I thought of the Cardinal--a sort of
shame keeps one from saying to an artist what one thinks of his
work--but to you I can say how nobly he warmed up the story of the old
religion to my exacting mind in that impersonation. I shall think always
of dying monarchy in his Charles--and always of dying hierarchy in his
Wolsey. How Protestant and dull all grew when that noble type had gone!

"I can't go to church till red cardinals come back (and may they be of
exactly that red) nor to Court till trumpets and banners come back--nor
to evening parties till the dances are like that dance. What a lovely
young Queen has been found. But there was no YOU.... Perhaps it was as
well. I couldn't have you slighted even in a play, and put aside. When
I go back to see you, as I soon will, it will be easier. Mr. Irving let
me know you would not act, and proposed that I should go later
on--wasn't that like him? So I sat with my children and was right happy;
and, as usual, the streets looked dirty, and all the people muddy and
black as we came away. Please not to answer this stuff.

"Ever yours affectionately,

"E.B.-J.

"--I wish that Cardinal could have been made Pope, and sat with his foot
on the Earl of Surrey's neck. Also I wish to be a Cardinal; but then I
sometimes want to be a pirate. We can't have all we want.

"Your boy was very kind--I thought the race of young men who are polite
and attentive to old fading ones had passed away with antique
pageants--but it isn't so."

When the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire gave the famous fancy dress
ball at Devonshire House, Henry attended it in the robes which had
appealed so strongly to Burne-Jones's imaginative eye. I was told by one
who was present at this ball that as the Cardinal swept up the
staircase, his long train held magnificently over his arm, a sudden wave
of reality seemed to sweep upstairs with him, and reduce to the
prettiest make-believe all the aristocratic masquerade that surrounded
him.

I renewed my acquaintance with "Henry VIII." in 1902, when I played
Queen Katherine for Mr. Benson during the Shakespeare Memorial
performances in April. I was pretty miserable at the time--the Lyceum
reign was dying, and taking an unconscionably long time about it, which
made the