Another thing I thought cruel at this time was the scandal which was talked in the theater.  A change for the better has taken place in this respect—­at any rate, in conduct.  People behave better now, and in our profession, carried on as it is in the public eye, behavior is everything.  At the Haymarket there were simply no bounds to what was said in the greenroom.  One night I remember gathering up my skirts (we were, I think, playing “The Rivals” at the time), making a curtsey, as Mr. Chippendale, one of the best actors in old comedy I ever knew, had taught me, and sweeping out of the room with the famous line from another Sheridan play:  “Ladies and gentlemen, I leave my character behind me!”

I see now that this was very priggish of me, but I am quite as uncompromising in my hatred of scandal now as I was then.  Quite recently I had a line to say in “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,” which is a very helpful reply to any tale-bearing.  “As if any one ever knew the whole truth about anything!” That is just the point.  It is only the whole truth which is informing and fair in the long run, and the whole truth is never known.

I regard my engagement at the Haymarket as one of my lost opportunities, which in after years I would have given much to have over again.  I might have learned so much more than I did.  I was preoccupied by events outside the theater.  Tom Taylor, who had for some time been a good friend to both Kate and me, had introduced us to Mr. Watts, the great painter, and to me the stage seemed a poor place when compared with the wonderful studio where Kate and I were painted as “The Sisters.”  At the Taylors’ house, too, the friends, the arts, the refinements had an enormous influence on me, and for a time the theater became almost distasteful.  Never at any time in my life have I been ambitious, but at the Haymarket I was not even passionately anxious to do my best with every part that came in my way—­a quality which with me has been a good substitute for ambition.  I was just dreaming of and aspiring after another world, a world full of pictures and music and gentle, artistic people with quiet voices and elegant manners.  The reality of such a world was Little Holland House, the home of Mr. Watts.

So I confess quite frankly that I did not appreciate until it was too late, my advantages in serving at the Haymarket with comrades who were the most surpassingly fine actors and actresses in old comedy that I have ever known.  There were Mr. Buckstone, the Chippendales, Mr. Compton, Mr. Farren.  They one and all thoroughly understood Sheridan.  Their bows, their curtseys, their grand manner, the indefinable style which they brought to their task were something to see.  We shall never know their like again, and the smoothest old-comedy acting of this age seems rough in comparison.  Of course, we suffer more with every fresh decade that separates us from Sheridan.  As he gets farther and farther away, the traditions of the performances which he conducted become paler and paler.  Mr. Chippendale knew these traditions backwards.  He might even have known Sheridan himself.  Charles Reade’s mother did know him, and sat on the stage with him while he rehearsed “The School for Scandal” with Mrs. Abingdon, the original Lady Teazle in the part.