of these wonderfully
"good-looking people" all together, and also because of my having had to
sing with Moore--an honor and glory hardly compensating the distress of
semi-strangulation, in order to avoid drowning his feeble thread of a
voice with the heavy, robust contralto which I found it very difficult
to swallow half of, while singing second to him, in his own melodies,
with the other half. My acquaintance with Mrs. Norton lasted through a
period of many years, and, though never very intimate, was renewed with
cordiality each time I returned to England. It began just after I came
out on the stage, when I was about twenty, and she a few years older. My
father and mother had known her parents and grandparents, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan and Miss Lindley, from whom their descendants derived
the remarkable beauty and brilliant wit which distinguished them.

My mother was at Drury Lane when Mr. Sheridan was at the head of its
administration, and has often described to me the extraordinary
proceedings of that famous first night of "Pizarro," when, at last
keeping the faith he had so often broken with the public, Mr. Sheridan
produced that most effective of melodramas, with my aunt and uncle's
parts still unfinished, and, depending upon their extraordinary rapidity
of study, kept them learning the last scenes of the last act, which he
was still writing, while the beginning of the piece was being performed.
By the by, I do not know what became of the theories about the dramatic
art, and the careful and elaborate study necessary for its perfection.
In this particular instance John Kemble's Rolla and Mrs. Siddons's
Elvira must have been what may be called extemporaneous acting. Not
impossibly, however, these performances may have gained in vivid power
and effect what they lost in smoothness and finish, from the very
nervous strain and excitement of such a mental effort as the actors were
thus called upon to make. My mother remembered well, too, the dismal
Saturdays when, after prolonged periods of non-payment of their
salaries, the poorer members of the company, and all the unfortunate
work-people, carpenters, painters, scene-shifters, understrappers of all
sorts, and plebs in general of the great dramatic concern, thronging the
passages and staircases, would assail Sheridan on his way to the
treasury with pitiful invocations: "For God's sake, Mr. Sheridan, pay us
our salaries!" "For Heaven's sake, Mr. Sheridan, let us have som