"
"I'm not to say anything about it."
"It's in Shakespeare!"
"I'm not to tell."
"But I know. I've been thinking it out. It's 'The Merchant of Venice.'"
"Nothing is settled yet. It's on the cards."
"I know! I know!" said wise old Charles. "Well, you'll never have such a
good part as Philippa Chester!"
"No, Nelly, never!" said Mrs. Seymour, who happened to overhear this.
"They call Philippa a Rosalind part. Rosalind! Rosalind is not to be
compared with it!"
Between Mrs. Seymour and Charles Reade existed a friendship of that rare
sort about which it is easy for people who are not at all rare,
unfortunately, to say ill-natured things. Charles Reade worshiped Laura
Seymour, and she understood him and sympathized with his work and his
whims. She died before he did, and he never got over it. The great
success of one of his last plays, "Drink," an adaptation from the
French, in which Charles Warner is still thrilling audiences to this
day, meant nothing to him because she was not alive to share it. The "In
Memoriam" which he had inscribed over her grave is characteristic of the
man, the woman, and their friendship:
HERE LIES THE GREAT HEART OF
LAURA SEYMOUR
I liked Mrs. Seymour so much that I was hurt when I found that she had
instructed Charles Reade to tell Nelly Terry "not to paint her face" in
the daytime, and I was young enough to enjoy revenging myself in my own
way.
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