My portrait as Lady Macbeth by Sargent used to hang in the alcove in the Beefsteak Room when it was not away at some exhibition, and the artist and I have often supped under it—­to me no infliction, for I have always loved the picture, and think it is far more like me than any other.  Mr. Sargent first of all thought that he would paint me at the moment when Lady Macbeth comes out of the castle to welcome Duncan.  He liked the swirl of the dress, and the torches and the women bowing down on either side.  He used to make me walk up and down his studio until I nearly dropped in my heavy dress, saying suddenly as I got the swirl:—­“That’s it, that’s it!” and rushing off to his canvas to throw on some paint in his wonderful inimitable fashion!

But he had to give up that idea of the Lady Macbeth picture all the same.  I was the gainer, for he gave me the unfinished sketch, and it is certainly very beautiful.

By this sketch hangs a tale of Mr. Sargent’s great-heartedness.  When the details of my jubilee performance at Drury Lane were being arranged, the Committee decided to ask certain distinguished artists to contribute to the programme.  They were all delighted about it, and such busy men as Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema, Mr. Abbey, Mr. Byam Shaw, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. James Pryde, Mr. Orpen, and Mr. William Nicholson all gave some of their work to me.  Mr. Sargent was asked if he would allow the first Lady Macbeth study to be reproduced.  He found that it would not reproduce well, so in the height of the season and of his work with fashionable sitters, he did an entirely new painting of the same subject, which would reproduce!  This act of kind friendship I could never forget even if the picture were not in front of me at this minute to remind me of it.  “You must think of me as one of the people bowing down to you in the picture,” he wrote to me when he sent the new version for the programme.  Nothing during my jubilee celebrations touched me more than this wonderful kindness of Mr. Sargent’s.

Burne-Jones would have done something for my jubilee programme too, I think, had he lived.  He was one of my kindest friends, and his letters—­he was a heaven-born letter-writer—­were like no one else’s; full of charm and humor and feeling.  Once when I was starting for a long tour in America he sent me a picture with this particularly charming letter: 

“THE GRANGE, “July 14, 1897.

“My dear Miss Terry,—­

“I never have the courage to throw you a huge bouquet as I should like to—­so in default I send you a little sign of my homage and admiration.  I made it purposely for you, which is its only excellence, and thought nothing but gold good enough to paint with for you—­and now it’s done, I am woefully disappointed.  It looks such a poor wretch of a thing, and there is no time to make another before you go, so look mercifully upon it—­it did mean so well—­as you would upon a foolish friend, not holding it up to the light, but putting it in a corner and never showing it.