VI

Miss Ward has one great stage gift which is not given to many: her eyes can blaze. I can only recall two other actresses who had the same quality in good degree: Mdlle. Schneider, who forty years ago played the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in Offenbach’s Opera; and Christine Nilsson. The latter I saw in London in 1867, and from where I sat—high up in the seat just in front of the gallery—I could note the starry splendour of her blue eyes. Ten years later, in Lohengrin at Her Majesty’s Opera House, I noticed the same—this time from the stalls. And yet once again when I sat opposite her at supper on the night of her retirement, June 20, 1888. The supper party was a small one, given by Mr. and Mrs. Brydges-Willyams at 9 Upper Brook Street. Irving was there and Ellen Terry, Lord Burnham and Miss Matilda Levy—brother and sister of our hostess—Count Miranda, to whom Nilsson was afterwards married, and his daughter, my wife and myself.

Nilsson came in from her triumph at the Albert Hall, blazing with jewels. She wore that night only those that had been given to her by Kings and Queens—and other varieties of monarchs.