As Juliet I did not look right.  My little daughter Edy, a born archaeologist, said:  “Mother, you oughtn’t to have a fringe.”  Yet, strangely enough, Henry himself liked me as Juliet.  After the first night, or was it the dress rehearsal—­I am not quite clear which—­he wrote to me that “beautiful as Portia was, Juliet leaves her far, far behind.  Never anybody acted more exquisitely the part of the performance which I saw from the front.  ‘Hie to high fortune,’ and ’Where spirits resort’ were simply incomparable....  Your mother looked very radiant last night.  I told her how proud she should be, and she was....  The play will be, I believe, a mighty ‘go,’ for the beauty of it is bewildering.  I am sure of this, for it dumbfounded them all last night.  Now you—­we—­must make our task a delightful one by doing everything possible to make our acting easy and comfortable.  We are in for a long run.”

To this letter he added a very human postscript:  “I have determined not to see a paper for a week—­I know they’ll cut me up, and I don’t like it!”

Yes, he was cut up, and he didn’t like it, but a few people knew.  One of them was Mr. Frankfort Moore, the novelist, who wrote to me of this “revealing Romeo, full of originality and power.”

“Are you affected by adverse criticism?” I was asked once.  I answered then and I answer now, that legitimate adverse criticism has always been of use to me if only because it “gave me to think” furiously.  Seldom does the outsider, however talented, as a writer and observer, recognize the actor’s art, and often we are told that we are acting best when we are showing the works most plainly, and denied any special virtue when we are concealing our method.  Professional criticism is most helpful, chiefly because it induces one to criticize oneself.  “Did I give that impression to anyone?  Then there must have been something wrong somewhere.”  The “something” is often a perfectly different blemish from that to which the critic drew attention.

Unprofessional criticism is often more helpful still, but alas! one’s friends are to one’s faults more than a little blind, and to one’s virtues very kind!  It is through letters from people quite unknown to me that I have sometimes learned valuable lessons.  During the run of “Romeo and Juliet” some one wrote and told me that if the dialogue at the ball could be taken in a lighter and quicker way, it would better express the manner of a girl of Juliet’s age.  The same unknown critic pointed out that I was too slow and studied in the Balcony Scene.  She—­I think it was a woman—­was perfectly right.

On the hundredth night, although no one liked my Juliet very much, I received many flowers, little tokens, and poems.  To one bouquet was pinned a note which ran: 

    “To JULIET,
      As a mark of respect and Esteem
        From the Gasmen of the Lyceum Theater.”