The grace and elegance of Henry as the civilized brother I shall never
forget. There was something in _him_ to which the perfect style of the
D'Orsay period appealed, and he spoke the stilted language with as much
truth as he wore the cravat and the tight-waisted full-breasted coats.
Such lines as--
"'Tis she! Her footstep beats upon my heart!"
were not absurd from his lips.
The sincerity of the period, he felt, lay in its elegance. A rough
movement, a too undeliberate speech, and the absurdity of the thing
might be given away. It was in fact given away by Terriss at
Chateau-Renaud, who was not the smooth, graceful, courteous villain that
Alfred Wigan had been and that Henry wanted. He told me that he paid
Miss Fowler, an actress who in other respects was not very remarkable,
an enormous salary because she could look the high-bred lady of elegant
manners.
It was in "The Corsican Brothers" that tableau curtains were first used
at the Lyceum. They were made of red plush, which suited the old
decoration of the theater. Those who only saw the Lyceum after its
renovation in 1881 do not realize perhaps that before that date it was
decorated in dull gold and dark crimson, and had funny boxes with high
fronts like old-fashioned church pews.
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