Between every word Henry was whispering: "Get on--get on!" Old Mead,
whose memory was never good, became flustered, and at the end of the
line came to a dead stop.
"Get on, get on," said Henry.
Mead looked round with dignity, opened his mouth and shut it, opened it
again, and in his anxiety to oblige Henry, did get on indeed!--to the
last line of the long speech.
"We all expect a gentle answer, Jew."
The first line and the last line were all that we heard of the Duke's
speech that night. It must have been the shortest version of it on
record.
This was the play with which the Lyceum reopened in the autumn of 1880.
I was on the last of my provincial tours with Charles Kelly at the time,
but I must have come up to see the revival, for I remember Henry Irving
in it very distinctly. He had not played the dual role of Louis and
Fabien del Franchi before, and he had to compete with old playgoers'
memories of Charles Kean and Fechter. Wisely enough he made of it a
"period" play, emphasizing its old-fashioned atmosphere. In 1891, when
the play was revived, the D'Orsay costumes were noticed and considered
piquant and charming. In 1880 I am afraid they were regarded with
indifference as merely antiquated.
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