No matter what the character that
Mrs. Kean was assuming, she always used to wear her hair drawn flat over
her forehead and twisted tight round her ears in a kind of circular
sweep--such as the old writing-masters used to make when they attempted
an extra grand flourish. And then the amount of petticoats she wore!
Even as Hermione she was always bunched out by layer upon layer of
petticoats, in defiance of the fact that classical parts should not be
dressed in a superfluity of raiment. But if the petticoats were full of
starch, the voice was full of pathos--and the dignity, simplicity, and
womanliness of Mrs. Charles Kean's Hermione could not have been marred
by a far more grotesque costume.
There is something, I suppose, in a woman's nature which always makes
her remember how she was dressed at any specially eventful moment of her
life, and I can see myself, as though it were yesterday, in the little
red-and-silver dress I wore as Mamilius. Mrs. Grieve, the
dresser--"Peter Grieve-us," as we children called her--had pulled me
into my very pink tights (they were by no means _tight_ but very baggy,
according to the pictures of me), and my mother had arranged my hair in
sausage curls on each side of my head in even more perfect order and
regularity than usual.
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