Before Pauline I had played Clara Douglas in a revival of “Money,” and I found her far more interesting and possible.  To act the balance of the girl was keen enjoyment; it foreshadowed some of that greater enjoyment I was to have in after years when playing Hermione—­another well-judged, well-balanced mind, a woman who is not passion’s slave, who never answers on the spur of the moment, but from the depths of reason and divine comprehension.  I didn’t agree with Clara Douglas’s sentiments but I saw her point of view, and that was everything.

Tom Taylor, like Charles Reade, never hesitated to speak plainly to me about my acting, and, after the first night of “Money,” wrote me a letter full of hints and caution and advice: 

“As I expected, you put feeling into every situation which gave you the opportunity, and the truth of your intention and expression seemed to bring a note of nature into the horribly sophisticated atmosphere of that hollow and most claptrappy of all Bulwerian stage offenses.  Nothing could be better than the appeal to Evelyn in the last act.  It was sweet, womanly and earnest, and rang true in every note.

“But you were nervous and uncomfortable in many parts for want of sufficient rehearsal.  These passages you will, no doubt, improve in nightly.  I would only urge on you the great importance of studying to be quiet and composed, and not fidgeting.  There was especially a trick of constantly twiddling with and looking at your fingers which you should, above all, be on your guard against....  I think, too, you showed too evident feeling in the earlier scene with Evelyn.  A blind man must have read what you felt—­your sentiment should be more masked.

“Laura (Mrs. Taylor) absolutely hates the play.  We both thought—­detestable in his part, false in emphasis, violent and coarse.  Generally the fault of the performance was, strange to say for that theater, overacting, want of repose, point, and finish.  With you in essentials I was quite satisfied, but quiet—­not so much movement of arms and hands.  Bear this in mind for improvement; and go over your part to yourself with a view to it.

“The Allinghams have been here to-day.  They saw you twice as Portia, and were charmed.  Mrs. Allingham wants to paint you.  Allingham tells me that Spedding is going to write an article on your Portia, and will include Clara Douglas.  I am going to see Salvini in ‘Hamlet’ to-morrow morning, but I would call in Charlotte Street between one and two, on the chance of seeing you and talking it over, and amplifying what I have said.

“Ever your true old friend,

“TOM TAYLOR.”

A true old friend indeed he was!  I have already tried to convey how much I owed to him—­how he stood by me and helped me in difficulties, and said generously and unequivocally, at the time of my separation from my first husband, that “the poor child was not to blame.”