" He was
engaged to the beautiful Adelaide Neilson, an actress whose brilliant
career was cut off suddenly when she was riding in the Bois. She drank a
glass of milk when she was overheated, was taken ill, and died. I am
told that she commanded L700 a week in America, and in England people
went wild over her Juliet. She looked like a child of the warm South,
although she was born, I think, in Manchester, and her looks were much
in her favor as Juliet. She belonged to the ripe, luscious, pomegranate
type of woman. The only living actress with the same kind of beauty is
Maxine Elliott.
Adelaide Neilson had a short reign, but a most triumphant one. It was
easy to understand it when one saw her. She was so gracious, so
feminine, so lovely. She did things well, but more from instinct than
anything else. She had no science. Edward Compton now takes his own
company round the provinces in an excellent repertoire of old comedies.
He has done as much to make country audiences familiar with them as Mr.
Benson has done to make them familiar with Shakespeare.
I come now to the Lyceum rehearsals of November, 1878. Although Henry
Irving had played Hamlet for over two hundred nights in London, and for
I don't know how many nights in the provinces, he always rehearsed in
cloak and rapier.
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