’And then, as my mood cooled still further, I began to recall many an evening at the Francais with you, and one part after another, one actor after another, recurred to me, till, as I realised afresh what dramatic intelligence and dramatic training really are, I fell into an angry contempt for our lavish English enthusiasms.  Poor girl! it is not her fault if she believes herself to be a great actress.  Brought up under misleading conditions, and without any but the most elementary education, how is she to know what the real thing means?  She finds herself the rage within a few weeks of her appearance in the greatest city of the world.  Naturally, she pays no heed to her critics,—­why should she?

’And she is indeed a most perplexing mixture.  Do what I will I cannot harmonise all my different impressions of her.  Let me begin again.  Why is it that her acting is so poor?  I never saw a more dramatic personality!  Everything that she says or does is said or done with a warmth, a force, a vivacity that make her smallest gesture and her lightest tone impress themselves upon you.  I felt this very strongly two or three times after the play on Friday night.  In her talk with Forbes, for instance, whom she has altogether in her toils, and whom she plays with as though he were the gray-headed Merlin and she an innocent Vivien, weaving harmless spells about him.  And then, from this mocking war of words and looks, this gay camaraderie, in which there was not a scrap of coquetry or self-consciousness, she would pass into a sudden outburst of anger as to the impertinence of English rich people—­the impertinence of rich millionaires who have tried once or twice to “order” her for their evening parties as they would order their ices, or the impertinence of the young “swell about town” who thinks she has nothing to do behind the scenes but receive his visits and provide him with entertainment.  And, as the quick impetuous words came rushing out, you felt that here for once was a woman speaking her real mind to you, and that with a flashing eye and curving lip, an inborn grace and energy which made every word memorable.  If she would but look like that or speak like that on the stage!  But there, of course, is the rub.  The whole difficulty of art consists in losing your own personality, so to speak, and finding it again transformed, and it is a difficulty which Miss Bretherton has never even understood.

’After this impression of spontaneity and natural force, I think what struck me most was the physical effect London has already exercised upon her in six weeks.  She looks superbly sound and healthy; she is tall and fully developed, and her colour, for all its delicacy, is pure and glowing.  But, after all, she was born in a languid tropical climate, and it is the nervous strain, the rush, the incessant occupation of London which seem to be telling upon her.  She gave me two or three times a painful impression of fatigue on Friday—­fatigue and something