Among the girls “walking on” was Kate Rorke.  This made me take a special interest in watching what she did later on.  No one who saw her fine performance in “The Profligate” could easily forget it, and I shall never understand why the London public ever let her go.

It was during the run of “Olivia” that Henry Irving became sole lessee of the Lyceum Theater.  For a long time he had been contemplating the step, but it was one of such magnitude that it could not be done in a hurry.  I daresay he found it difficult to separate from Mrs. Bateman and from her daughter, who had for such a long time been his “leading lady.”  He had to be a little cruel, not for the last time, in a career devoted unremittingly and unrelentingly to his art and his ambition.

It was said by an idle tongue in later years that rich ladies financed Henry Irving’s ventures.  The only shadow of foundation for this statement is that at the beginning of his tenancy of the Lyceum, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts lent him a certain sum of money, every farthing of which was repaid during the first few months of his management.

The first letter that I ever received from Henry Irving was written on July 20, 1878, from 15A, Grafton Street, the house in which he lived during the entire period of his Lyceum management.

“Dear Miss Terry,—­

“I look forward to the pleasure of calling upon you on Tuesday next at two o’clock.

“With every good wish, believe me, sincerely,

“HENRY IRVING.”

The call was in reference to my engagement as Ophelia.  Strangely characteristic I see it now to have been of Henry that he was content to take my powers as an actress more or less on trust.  A mutual friend, Lady Pollock, had told him that I was the very person for him; that “all London” was talking of my Olivia; that I had acted well in Shakespeare with the Bancrofts; that I should bring to the Lyceum Theater what players call “a personal following.”  Henry chose his friends as carefully as he chose his company and his staff.  He believed in Lady Pollock implicitly, and he did not—­it is possible that he could not—­come and see my Olivia for himself.

I was living in Longridge Road when Henry Irving first came to see me.

Not a word of our conversation about the engagement can I remember.  I did notice, however, the great change that had taken place in the man since I had last met him in 1867.  Then he was really almost ordinary looking—­with a mustache, an unwrinkled face, and a sloping forehead.  The only wonderful thing about him was his melancholy.  When I was playing the piano once in the greenroom at the Queen’s Theater, he came in and listened.  I remember being made aware of his presence by his sigh—­the deepest, profoundest, sincerest sigh I ever heard from any human being.  He asked me if I would not play the piece again.