When at last I was able to play in “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,” I found Bernard Shaw wonderfully patient at rehearsal.  I look upon him as a good, kind, gentle creature whose “brain-storms” are just due to the Irishman’s love of a fight; they never spring from malice or anger.  It doesn’t answer to take Bernard Shaw seriously.  He is not a man of convictions.  That is one of the charms of his plays—­to me at least.  One never knows how the cat is really jumping.  But it jumps.  Bernard Shaw is alive, with nine lives, like that cat!

On Whit Monday, 1902, I received a telegram from Mr. Tree saying that he was coming down to Winchelsea to see me on “an important matter of business.”  I was at the time suffering from considerable depression about the future.

The Stratford-on-Avon visit had inspired me with the feeling that there was life in the old ’un yet and had distracted my mind from the strangeness of no longer being at the Lyceum permanently with Henry Irving.  But there seemed to be nothing ahead, except two matinees a week with him at the Lyceum, to be followed by a provincial tour in which I was only to play twice a week, as Henry’s chief attraction was to be “Faust.”  This sort of “dowager” engagement did not tempt me.  Besides, I hated the idea of drawing a large salary and doing next to no work.

So when Mr. Tree proposed that I should play Mrs. Page (Mrs. Kendal being Mrs. Ford) in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at His Majesty’s, it was only natural that I should accept the offer joyfully.  I telegraphed to Henry Irving, asking him if he had any objection to my playing at His Majesty’s.  He answered:  “Quite willing if proposed arrangements about matinees are adhered to.”

I have thought it worth while to give the facts about this engagement, because so many people seemed at the time, and afterwards, to think that I had treated Henry Irving badly by going to play in another theater, and that theater one where a certain rivalry with the Lyceum as regards Shakespearean productions had grown up.  There was absolutely no foundation for the rumors that my “desertion” caused further estrangement between Henry Irving and me.

“Heaven give you many, many merry days and nights,” he telegraphed to me on the first night; and after that first night (the jolliest that I ever saw), he wrote delighting in my success.

It was a success—­there was no doubt about it!  Some people accused the Merry Wives of rollicking and “mafficking” overmuch—­but these were the people who forgot that we were acting in a farce, and that farce is farce, even when Shakespeare is the author.

All the summer I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  It was all such good fun—­Mrs. Kendal was so clever and delightful to play with, Mr. Tree so indefatigable in discovering new funny “business.”

After the dress-rehearsal I wrote in my diary:  “Edy has real genius for dresses for the stage.”  My dress for Mrs. Page was such a real thing—­it helped me enormously—­and I was never more grateful for my daughter’s gift than when I played Mrs. Page.