Mrs. Wigan, nee Leonora Pincott, did me the honor to think that I was worth teaching, and took nearly as much pains to improve me as Mrs. Kean had done at a different stage in my artistic growth.  Her own accomplishments as a comedy actress impressed me more than I can say.  I remember seeing her as Mrs. Candour, and thinking to myself, “This is absolutely perfect.”  If I were a teacher I would impress on young actresses never to move a finger or turn the eye without being quite certain that the movement or the glance tells something.  Mrs. Wigan made few gestures, but each one quietly, delicately indicated what the words which followed expressed.  And while she was speaking she never frittered away the effect of that silent eloquence.

One of my besetting sins was—­nay, still is—­the lack of repose.  Mrs. Wigan at once detected the fault, and at rehearsals would work to make me remedy it. “Stand still!” she would shout from the stalls.  “Now you’re of value!” “Motionless!  Just as you are! That’s right.”

A few years later she came to see me at the Court Theater, where I was playing in “The House of Darnley,” and afterwards wrote me the following very kind and encouraging letter: 

“December 7, 1877.

“Dear Miss Terry,—­

“You have a very difficult part in ‘The House of Darnley.’  I know no one who could play it as well as you did last night—­but you could do it much better.  You would vex me much if I thought you had no ambition in your art.  You are the one young actress of my day who can have her success entirely in her own hands.  You have all the gifts for your noble profession, and, as you know, your own devotion to it will give you all that can be learned.  I’m very glad my stage direction was useful and pleasant to you, and any benefit you have derived from it is overpaid by your style of acting.  You cannot have a ‘groove’; you are too much of an artist.  Go on and prosper, and if at any time you think I can help you in your art, you may always count on that help from your most sincere well-wisher

“LEONORA WIGAN.”

Another service that Mrs. Wigan did me was to cure me of “fooling” on the stage. “Did she?” I thought I heard some one interrupt me unkindly at that point!  Well, at any rate, she gave me a good fright one night, and I never forgot it, though I will not say I never laughed again.  I think it was in “The Double Marriage,” the first play put on at the New Queen’s.  As Rose de Beaurepaire, I wore a white muslin Directoire dress and looked absurdly young.  There was one “curtain” which used to convulse Wyndham.  He had a line, “Whose child is this?” and there was I, looking a mere child myself, and with a bad cold in my head too, answering:  “It’s bine!” The very thought of it used to send us off into fits of laughter.  We hung on to chairs, helpless, limp, and incapable.  Mrs. Wigan said if we did it again, she would go in front and hiss us, and she carried out her threat.  The very next time we laughed, a loud hiss rose from the stagebox.  I was simply paralyzed with terror.