As Ruth Meadowes I had very little to do, but what there was, was worth doing.  The last act of “Eugene Aram,” like the last act of “Ravenswood,” gave me opportunity.  It was staged with a great appreciation of grim and poetic effect.  Henry always thought that the dark, overhanging branch of the cedar was like the cruel outstretched hand of Fate.  He called it the Fate Tree, and used it in “Hamlet,” in “Eugene Aram,” and in “Romeo and Juliet.”

In “Eugene Aram,” the Fate Tree drooped low over the graves in the churchyard.  On one of them Henry used to be lying in a black cloak as the curtain went up on the last act.  Not until a moonbeam struck the dark mass did you see that it was a man.

He played all such parts well.  Melancholy and the horrors had a peculiar fascination for him—­especially in these early days.  But his recitation of the poem “Eugene Aram” was finer than anything in the play—­especially when he did it in a frock-coat.  No one ever looked so well in a frock-coat!  He was always ready to recite it—­used to do it after supper, anywhere.  We had a talk about it once, and I told him that it was too much for a room.  No man was ever more willing to listen to suggestion or less obstinate about taking advice.  He immediately moderated his methods when reciting in a room, making it all the less theatrical.  The play was a good repertoire play, and we did it later on in America with success.  There the part of Houseman was played by Terriss, who was quite splendid in it, and at Chicago my little boy Teddy made his second appearance on any stage as Joey, a gardener’s boy.  He had, when still a mere baby, come on to the stage at the Court in “Olivia,” and this must be counted his first appearance, although the chroniclers, ignoring both that and Joey in “Eugene Aram,” say he never appeared at all until he played an important part in “The Dead Heart.”

It is because of Teddy that “Eugene Aram” is associated in my mind with one of the most beautiful sights upon the stage that I ever saw in my life.  He was about ten or eleven at the time, and as he tied up the stage roses, his cheeks, untouched by rouge, put the reddest of them to shame!  He was so graceful and natural; he spoke his lines with ease, and smiled all over his face!  “A born actor!” I said, although Joey was my son.  Whenever I think of him in that stage garden, I weep for pride, and for sorrow, too, because before he was thirty my son had left the stage—­he who had it all in him.  I have good reason to be proud of what he has done since, but I regret the lost actor always.