And I
used to answer: "I've played my cards for what I want."
Years afterwards, when he and mother used to come to first nights at the
Lyceum, the grossest flattery of me after the performance was not good
enough for them.
"How proud you must be of her!" someone would say. "How well this part
suits her!"
"Yes," father would answer, in a sort of "is-that-all-you-have-to-say"
tone. "But she ought to play Rosalind!"
To him I owe the gaiety of temperament which has enabled me to dance
through the most harsh and desert passages of my life, just as he used
to make Kate and me dance along the sordid London streets as we walked
home from the Princess's Theater. He would make us come under his cloak,
partly for warmth, partly to hide from us the stages of the journey
home. From the comfortable darkness one of us would cry out:
"Oh, I'm so tired! Aren't we nearly home? Where are we, father?"
"You know Schwab, the baker?"
"Yes, yes."
"Well, we're _not_ there yet!"
As I grew up, this teasing, jolly, insouciant Irish father of mine was
relieved of some of his paternal duties by Tom Taylor. It was not Nelly
alone whom Tom Taylor fathered. He adopted the whole family.
At Lavender Sweep, with the horse-chestnut blossoms strewing the drive
and making it look like a tessellated pavement, all of us were always
welcome, and Tom Taylor would often come to our house and ask mother to
grill him a bone! Such intimate friendships are seldom possible in our
busy profession, and there was never another Tom Taylor in my life.
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