Tree's Coronation production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." But the
enmity did not seem to worry us as much as the newspaper men over the
Atlantic had represented.
It was during this engagement in 1902 that a young actor who was
watching us coming in at the stage-door at His Majesty's one day is
reported to have said: "Look at Mr. Tree between his two 'stars'!"
"You mean Ancient Lights!" answered the witty actress to whom the remark
was made.
However, "e'en in our ashes burn our wonted fires," or, to descend from
the sublime to the ridiculous, and from the poetry of Gray to the
pantomime gag of Drury Lane and Herbert Campbell, "Better to be a good
old has-been than a never-was-er!"
But it was long before the "has-been" days that Mrs. Kendal decided not
to bring her consummately dexterous and humorous workmanship to the task
of playing Portia, and left the field open for me. My fires were only
just beginning to burn. Success I had had of a kind, and I had tasted
the delight of knowing that audiences liked me, and had liked them back
again. But never until I appeared as Portia at the Prince of Wales's had
I experienced that awe-struck feeling which comes, I suppose, to no
actress more than once in a lifetime--the feeling of the conqueror.
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