“Dear Miss Ellen Terry,—­

“I just wonder at you.  I noticed that Mr. Barrie the author (so-called) and his masterful wife had a letter they wanted to conceal from me, so I got hold of it, and it turned out to be from you, and not a line to me in it!  If you like the book, it is me you like, not him, and it is to me you should send your love, not to him.  Corp thinks, however, that you did not like to make the first overtures, and if that is the explanation, I beg herewith to send you my warm love (don’t mention this to Elspeth) and to say that I wish you would come and have a game with us in the Den (don’t let on to Grizel that I invited you).  The first moment I saw you, I said to myself, ‘This is the kind I like,’ and while the people round about me were only thinking of your acting, I was wondering which would be the best way of making you my willing slave, and I beg to say that I believe I have ‘found a way,’ for most happily the very ones I want most to lord it over, are the ones who are least able to resist me.

“We should have ripping fun.  You would be Jean MacGregor, captive in the Queen’s Bower, but I would climb up at the peril of my neck to rescue you, and you would faint in my strong arms, and wouldn’t Grizel get a turn when she came upon you and me whispering sweet nothings in the Lovers’ Walk?  I think it advisible to say in writing that I would only mean them as nothings (because Grizel is really my one), but so long as they were sweet, what does that matter (at the time); and besides, you could love me genuinely, and I would carelessly kiss your burning tears away.

“Corp is a bit fidgety about it, because he says I have two to love me already, but I feel confident that I can manage more than two.

“Trusting to see you at the Cuttle Well on Saturday when the eight o’clock bell is ringing,

“I am

“Your indulgent Commander,

“T.  SANDYS.

“P.S.—­Can you bring some of the Lyceum armor with you, and two hard-boiled eggs?”

Henry Irving once thought of producing Mr. Barrie’s play “The Professor’s Love Story.”  He was delighted with the first act, but when he had read the rest he did not think the play would do for the Lyceum.  It was the same with many plays which were proposed for us.  The ideas sounded all right, but as a rule the treatment was too thin, and the play, even if good, on too small a scale for the theater.

One of our playwrights of whom I always expected a great play was Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).  A little one-act play of hers, “Journeys End in Lovers’ Meeting”—­in which I first acted with Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Terriss at a special matinee in 1894—­brought about a friendship between us which lasted until her death.  Of her it could indeed be said with poignant truth, “She should have died hereafter.”  Her powers had not nearly reached their limit.