I did not know him at all, and the gift
of his service was essentially the impersonal desire of an artist to
honor another artist.
I was often asked during these jubilee days, "how I felt about it all,"
and I never could answer sensibly. The strange thing is that I don't
know even now what was in my heart. Perhaps it was one of my chief joys
that I had not to say good-bye at any of the celebrations. I could still
speak to my profession as a fellow-comrade on the active list, and to
the public as one still in their service.
One of those little things almost too good to be true happened at the
close of the Drury Lane matinee. A four-wheeler was hailed for me by the
stage-door keeper, and my daughter and I drove off to Lady Bancroft's in
Berkeley Square to leave some flowers. Outside the house, the cabman
told my daughter that in old days he had often driven Charles Kean from
the Princess's Theater, and that sometimes the little Miss Terrys were
put inside the cab too and given a lift! My daughter thought it such an
extraordinary coincidence that the old man should have come to the
stage-door of Drury Lane by a mere chance on my jubilee day that she
took his address, and I was to send him a photograph and remuneration.
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