him, he had been hooted because of his thin legs. The first service I
did him was to tell him they were beautiful, and to make him give up
padding them.

"What do you want with fat, podgy, prize-fighter legs!" I expostulated.

Praise to some people at certain stages of their career is more
developing than blame. I admired the very things in Henry for which
other people criticized him. I hope this helped him a little.

I brought help, too, in pictorial matters. Henry Irving had had little
training in such matters--I had had a great deal. Judgment about colors,
clothes and lighting must be _trained_. I had learned from Mr. Watts,
from Mr. Godwin, and from other artists, until a sense of decorative
effect had become second nature to me.

Before the rehearsals of "Hamlet" began at the Lyceum I went on a
provincial tour with Charles Kelly, and played for the first time in
"Dora," and "Iris," besides doing a steady round of old parts. In
Birmingham I went to see Henry's Hamlet. (I have tried already, most
inadequately, to say what it was to me.) I had also appeared for the
first time as Lady Teazle--a part which I wish I was not too old to play
now, for I could play it better. My performance in 1877 was not finished
enough, not light enough. I think I did the screen scene well. When the
screen was knocked over I did not stand still and rigid with eyes cast
down. That seemed to me an attitude of guilt. Only a _guilty_ woman,
surely, in such a situation would assume an air of conscious virtue. I
shrank back, and tried to hide my face--a natural movement, so it seemed
to me, for a woman who had been craning forward, listening in increasing
agitation to the conversation between Charles and Joseph Surface.