eferred an
unobtrusive indifference to a pedantic accuracy, which, she said, few
people appreciated, and which, if anything, rather took the attention
from the acting than added to its effect, when it was really fine.

She always said, when pictures and engravings were consulted, "Remember,
this presents but one view of the person, and does not change its
position: how will this dress look when it walks, runs, rushes, kneels,
sits down, falls, and turns its back?" I think an edge was added to my
mother's keen, rational, and highly artistic sense of this matter of
costume because it was the special hobby of her "favorite aversion," Mr.
E----, who had studied with great zeal and industry antiquarian
questions connected with the subject of stage representations, and was
perpetually suggesting to my father improvements on the old ignorant
careless system which prevailed under former managements.

It is very true that, as she said, Garrick acted Macbeth in a full court
suit of scarlet,--knee-breeches, powdered wig, pigtail, and all; and
Mrs. Siddons acted the Grecian Daughter in piles of powdered curls, with
a forest of feathers on the top of them, high-heeled shoes, and a
portentous hoop; and both made the audience believe that they looked
just as they should do. But for all that, actors and actresses who were
neither Garrick nor Mrs. Siddons were not less like the parts they
represented by being at least dressed as they should be; and the fine
accuracy of the Shakespearean revivals of Mr. Macready and Charles Kean
was in itself a great enjoyment; nobody was ever told to _omit_ the
tithing of mint and cummin, though other matters were more important;
and Kean's Othello would have been the grand performance it was, even
with the advantage of Mr. Fechter's clever and picturesque "getting up"
of the play, as a frame to it; as Mademoiselle Rachel's wonderful
fainting exclamation of "Oh, mon cher Curiace!" lost none of its
poignant pathos, though she knew how every fold of her drapery fell and
rested on the chair on which she sank in apparent unconsciousness.
Criticising a portrait of herself in that scene, she said to the
painter, "Ma robe ne fait pas ce pli la; elle fait, au contraire,
celui-ci." The artist, inclined to defend his picture, asked her how,
while she was lying with her eyes shut and feigning utter insensibility,
she could possibly tell anything about the plaits of her dress.
"Allez-y-voir," replied Rachel; and t