"I beg your pardon--I'm really awfully sorry, Mead."
"Sorry! sorry!" the old man snorted. "It's a d----d conspiracy!"
It was the dignity and gravity of Mead which made everything he said so
funny. I am afraid that those who never knew him will wonder where the
joke comes in.
I forget what year he left us for good, but in a letter of Henry's dated
September, 1888, written during a provincial tour of "Faust," when I was
ill and my sister Marion played Margaret instead of me, I find this
allusion to him:
"Wenman does the Kitchen Witch now (I altered it this morning) and Mead
the old one--the climber. Poor old chap, he'll not climb much longer!"
This was one of the least successful of Henry's Shakespearean
productions. Terriss looked all wrong as Orsino; many other people were
miscast. Henry said to me a few years later when he thought of doing
"The Tempest," "I can't do it without three great comedians. I ought
never to have attempted 'Twelfth Night' without them."
I don't think that I played Viola nearly as well as my sister Kate. Her
"I am the man" was very delicate and charming. I overdid that. My
daughter says: "Well, you were far better than any Viola that I have
seen since, but you were too simple to make a great hit in it.
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