Years later the author of the little play, Mr. Edmund Yates, the editor of The World—­wrote to me about my performance as the tiger: 

“When on June 13, 1859 (to no one else in the world would I breathe the date!) I saw a very young lady play a tiger in a comedietta of mine called ‘If the Cap Fits,’ I had no idea that that precocious child had in her the germ of such an artist as she has since proved herself.  What I think of her performance of Portia she will see in The World.”

In “The Merchant of Venice” though I had no speaking part, I was firmly convinced that the basket of doves which I carried on my shoulder was the principal attraction of the scene in which it appeared.  The other little boys and girls in the company regarded those doves with eyes of bitter envy.  One little chorus boy, especially, though he professed a personal devotion of the tenderest kind for me, could never quite get over those doves, and his romantic sentiments cooled considerably when I gained my proud position as dove-bearer.  Before, he had shared his sweets with me, but now he transferred both sweets and affections to some more fortunate little girl.  Envy, after all, is the death of love!

Mr. Harley was the Launcelot Gobbo in “The Merchant of Venice”—­an old gentleman, and almost as great a fop as Mr. Byrn.  He was always smiling; his two large rows of teeth were so very good!  And he had pompous, grandiloquent manners, and wore white gaiters and a long hanging eye-glass.  His appearance I should never have forgotten anyhow, but he is also connected in my mind with my first experience of terror.

It came to me in the greenroom, the window-seat of which was a favorite haunt of mine.  Curled up in the deep recess I had been asleep one evening, when I was awakened by a strange noise, and, peeping out, saw Mr. Harley stretched on the sofa in a fit.  One side of his face was working convulsively, and he was gibbering and mowing the air with his hand.  When he saw me, he called out:  “Little Nelly! oh, little Nelly!” I stood transfixed with horror.  He was still dressed as Launcelot Gobbo, and this made it all the more terrible.  A doctor was sent for, and Mr. Harley was looked after, but he never recovered from his seizure and died a few days afterwards.

Although so much of my early life is vague and indistinct, I can always see and hear Mr. Harley as I saw and heard him that night, and I can always recollect the view from the greenroom window.  It looked out on a great square courtyard, in which the spare scenery, that was not in immediate use, was stacked.  For some reason or other this courtyard was a favorite playground for a large company of rats.  I don’t know what the attraction was for them, except that they may have liked nibbling the paint off the canvas.  Out they used to troop in swarms, and I, from my perch on the window-seat, would watch and wonder.  Once a terrible storm came on, and years after, at the Lyceum, the Brocken Scene in “Faust” brought back the scene to my mind—­the thunder and lightning and the creatures crawling on every side, the grayness of the whole thing.