Too often weakness is mistaken for delicacy.
Mr. Hare was one of the best stage managers that I have met during the
whole of my long experience in the theater. He was snappy in manner,
extremely irritable if anything went wrong, but he knew what he wanted,
and he got it. No one has ever surpassed him in the securing of a
perfect _ensemble_. He was the Meissonier among the theater artists.
Very likely he would have failed if he had been called upon to produce
"King John," but what better witness to his talent than that he knew his
line and stuck to it?
The members of his company were his, body and soul, while they were
rehearsing. He gave them fifteen minutes for lunch, and any actor or
actress who was foolish or unlucky enough to be a minute late, was sorry
afterwards. Mr. Hare was peppery and irascible, and lost his temper
easily.
Personally, I always got on well with my new manager, and I ought to be
grateful to him, if only because he gave me the second great opportunity
of my career--the part of Olivia in Wills's play from "The Vicar of
Wakefield." During this engagement at the Court I married again. I had
met Charles Wardell, whose stage name was Kelly, when he was acting in
"Rachael the Reaper" for Charles Reade.
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