My father not acting Romeo with me deprived me of the most poetical and graceful stage lover of his day; but the public, who had long been familiar with his rendering of the part of Romeo, gained as much as I lost, by his taking that of Mercutio, which has never since been so admirably represented, and I dare affirm will never be given more perfectly.  The graceful ease, and airy sparkling brilliancy of his delivery of the witty fancies of that merry gentleman, the gallant defiance of his bearing toward the enemies of his house, and his heroically pathetic and humorous death-scene, were beyond description charming.  He was one of the best Romeos, and incomparably the best Mercutio, that ever trod the English stage.

My father was Miss O’Neill’s Romeo throughout her whole theatrical career, during which no other Juliet was tolerated by the English public.  This amiable and excellent woman was always an attached friend of our family, and one day, when she was about to take leave of me, at the end of a morning visit, I begged her to let my father have the pleasure of seeing her, and ran to his study to tell him whom I had with me.  He followed me hastily to the drawing-room, and stopping at the door, extended his arms towards her, exclaiming, “Ah, Juliet!” Lady Becher ran to him and embraced him with a pretty, affectionate grace, and the scene was pathetical as well as comical, for they were both white-haired, she being considerably upward of sixty and he of seventy years old; but she still retained the slender elegance of her exquisite figure, and he some traces of his pre-eminent personal beauty.

My mother had a great admiration and personal regard for Lady Becher, and told me an anecdote of her early life which transmitted those feelings of hers to me.  Lord F——­, eldest son of the Earl of E——­, a personally and mentally attractive young man, fell desperately in love with Miss O’Neill, who was (what the popular theatrical heroine of the day always is) the realization of their ideal to the youth, male and female, of her time, the stage star of her contemporaries.  Lord F——­’s family had nothing to say against the character, conduct, or personal endowments of the beautiful, actress who had enchanted, to such serious purpose as marriage, the heir of their house; but much, reasonably and rightly enough, against marriages disproportionate to such a degree as that, and the objectionable nature of the young woman’s peculiar circumstances and public calling.  Both Miss O’Neill, however, and Lord F——­ were enough in earnest in their mutual regard to accept the test of a year’s separation and suspension of all intercourse.  She remained to utter herself in Juliet to the English public, and her lover went and travelled abroad, both believing in themselves and each other.  No letters or communication passed between them; but toward the end of their year of probation vague rumors came flying to England of the life of dissipation led by the young man, and of the unworthy companions with whom he entertained the most intimate relations.  After this came more explicit tales of positive entanglement with one particular person, and reports of an entire devotion to one object quite incompatible with the constancy professed and promised to his English mistress.