I wrote to Tennyson’s son Hallam after the first night that I knew his father would be delighted with Henry’s splendid performance, but was afraid he would be disappointed in me.

“Dear Camma,” he answered, “I have given your messages to my father, but believe me, who am not ‘common report,’ that he will thoroughly appreciate your noble, most beautiful and imaginative rendering of ‘Camma.’  My father and myself hope to see you soon, but not while this detestable cold weather lasts.  We trust that you are not now really the worse for that night of nights.

“With all our best wishes,

“Yours ever sincerely,

“HALLAM TENNYSON.”

“I quite agree with you as to H.I.’s Synorix.”

The music of “The Cup” was not up to the level of the rest.  Lady Winchilsea’s setting of “Moon on the field and the foam,” written within the compass of eight notes, for my poor singing voice, which will not go up high nor down low, was effective enough, but the music as a whole was too “chatty” for a severe tragedy.  One night when I was singing my very best: 

    “Moon, bring him home, bring him home,
    Safe from the dark and the cold,”

some one in the audience sneezed.  Every one burst out laughing, and I had to laugh too.  I did not even attempt the next line.

“The Cup” was called a failure, but it ran 125 nights, and every night the house was crowded!  On the hundredth night I sent Tennyson the Cup itself.  I had it made in silver from Mr. Godwin’s design—­a three-handled cup, pipkin-shaped, standing on three legs.

“The Cup” and “The Corsican Brothers” together made the bill too heavy and too long, even at a time when we still “rang up” at 7:30; and in the April following the production of Tennyson’s beautiful tragedy—­which I think in sheer poetic intensity surpasses “Becket,” although it is not nearly so good a play—­“The Belle’s Stratagem” was substituted for “The Corsican Brothers.”  This was the first real rollicking comedy that a Lyceum audience had ever seen, and the way they laughed did my heart good.  I had had enough of tragedy and the horrors by this time, and I could have cried with joy at that rare and welcome sight—­an audience rocking with laughter.  On the first night the play opened propitiously enough with a loud laugh due to the only accident of the kind that ever happened at the Lyceum.  The curtain went up before the staff had “cleared,” and Arnott, Jimmy and the rest were seen running for their lives out of the center entrance!

People said that it was so clever of me to play Camma and Letitia Hardy (the comedy part in “The Belle’s Stratagem”) on the same evening.  They used to say the same kind thing, “only more so,” when Henry played Jingle and Matthias in “The Bells.”  But I never liked doing it.  A tour de force is always more interesting to the looker-on than to the person who is taking part in it.  One feels no pride in such an achievement, which ought to be possible to any one calling himself an actor.  Personally, I never play comedy and tragedy on the same night without a sense that one is spoiling the other.  Harmonies are more beautiful than contrasts in acting as in other things—­and more difficult, too.