“I don’t know,” said our host.  “Even a burlesque can be beautiful.”

Afterwards he asked me what I thought of “Jottings,” and I confessed that there seemed to me a good deal of truth in what had been said.  I had cut out all that he had written about us, read it several times, and thought it all very clever, most amusing—­and generally right.  Later on I found that Mr. Godwin and “Jottings” were one and the same!

At the Godwins’ I met Mr. Barclay, Mr. Hine, William Burges the architect, and many other people who made an impression on my young mind.  I accepted their lessons eagerly, and found them of the greatest value later on.

In March 1863 Mr. Chute opened the Theater Royal, Bath, when, besides a specially written play symbolic of the event, his stock company performed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  Titania was the first Shakespeare part I had played since I left Charles Kean, but I think even in those early days I was more at home in Shakespeare than anything else.  Mr. Godwin designed my dress, and we made it at his house in Bristol.  He showed me how to damp it and “wring” it while it was wet, tying up the material as the Orientals do in their “tie and dry” process, so that when it was dry and untied, it was all crinkled and clinging.  This was the first lovely dress that I ever wore, and I learned a great deal from it.

Almost directly after that appearance at Bath I went to London to fulfill an engagement at the Haymarket Theater, of which Mr. Buckstone was still the manager and Sothern the great attraction.  I had played Gertrude Howard in “The Little Treasure” during the stock season at Bristol, and when Mr. Buckstone wanted to do the piece at the Haymarket, he was told about me.  I was fifteen at this time, and my sense of humor was as yet ill-developed.  I was fond of “larking” and merry enough, but I hated being laughed at!  At any rate, I could see no humor in Mr. Sothern’s jokes at my expense.  He played my lover in “The Little Treasure,” and he was always teasing me—­pulling my hair, making me forget my part and look like an idiot.  But for dear old Mr. Howe, who was my “father” in the same piece, I should not have enjoyed acting in it at all, but he made amends for everything.  We had a scene together in which he used to cry, and I used to cry—­oh, it was lovely!

Why I should never have liked Sothern, with his wonderful hands and blue eyes, Sothern, whom every one found so fascinating and delightful, I cannot say, and I record it as discreditable to me, not to him.  It was just a case of “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.”  I admired him—­I could not help doing that—­but I dreaded his jokes, and thought some of them very cruel.