I

On the evening of Thursday, 20th November 1873, I strolled into the Theatre Royal, Dublin, to see what was on. I had been then for two years a dramatic critic, and was fairly well used to the routine of things. There was a very poor house indeed; in that huge theatre the few hundreds scattered about were like the plums in a fo’c’sle duff. The play was Legouve’s Adrienne Lecouvreur, a somewhat machine-made play of the old school. The lady who played Adrienne interested me at once; she was like a triton amongst minnows. She was very handsome; of a rich dark beauty, with clear-cut classical features, black hair, and great eyes that now and again flashed fire. I sat in growing admiration of her powers. Though there was a trace here and there of something which I thought amateurish she was so masterful, so dominating in other ways that I could not understand it. At the end of the second act I went into the lobby to ask the attendants if they could tell me anything about her as the name on the bill was entirely new to me. None of them, however, could enlighten me on any point except that she had appeared on Monday in Lucrezia Borgia; and that the business was very bad.

When the grand scene of the play came—that between the actress and her rival, the Princesse de Bouillon—the audience was all afire. Their enthusiasm and the sound of it recalled the description of Edmund Kean’s appearance at Drury Lane. I went round on the stage and saw John Harris the manager. I asked him who was the woman who was playing and where did she come from.

“She has no right to be playing to an audience like that!” I said pointing at the curtain which lay between us and the auditorium.

“I quite agree with you!” he answered. “She is fine; isn’t she? I saw her play in Manchester and at once offered her the date here which was vacant.” Just then she came upon the stage and he introduced me to her. When the play was over I went home and wrote my criticism, which duly appeared in the Irish Echo next evening.

That engagement of nine days was a series of débuts. In addition to Adrienne Lecouvreur she appeared in Medea, Lucrezia Borgia, The Actress of Padua, the “sleep-walking” scene of Macbeth, The Honeymoon. In one and all she showed great power and greater promise. It is a satisfactory memory to me to find, after her career has been made and her retirement—all too soon—effected after more than thirty years of stage success, in my diary of 29th November 1873—the last night of her engagement—

(“Mem. will be a great actress”).

I was reintroduced to her—this time by a personal friend—and there and then began a close friendship which has never faltered, which has been one of the delights of my life and which will I trust remain as warm as it is now till the death of either of us shall cut it short.