I., for it is just the dullest play
to read as ever was! He made it _intensely_ interesting."]
While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner," I was pleasing myself
with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was at
this time Wills's secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help
Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of
Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinee of it at some other theater,
but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said: "You must
do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the theater."
So we had the matinee at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree
were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry
saw me act--a whole part and from the "front" at least, for he had seen
and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had known me
such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a surprise. "I
wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you realized," he
wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me, and I continued
to do it "on and off" here and in America until 1902.
Many people said that I was good but the play was bad. This was hard on
Alfred Calmour.
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