The critics said that I played Olivia better at the Lyceum, but I did not feel this myself.
At first Henry did not rehearse the Vicar at all well. One day when he was stamping his foot very much, as if he was Matthias in "The Bells," my little [Edy], who was a terrible child and a wonderful critic, said:
"Don't go on like that, Henry. Why don't you talk as you do to me and Teddy? At home you are the Vicar."
The child's frankness did not offend Henry, because it was illuminating. A blind man had changed his Shylock; a little child changed his Vicar. When the first night came he gave a simple, lovable performance. Many people now understood and liked him as they had never done before. One of the things I most admired in it was his sense of the period.
In this, as in other plays, he used to make his entrance in the skin of the part. No need for him to rattle a ladder at the side to get up excitement and illusion as Macready is said to have done. He walked on, and was the simple-minded old clergyman, just as he had walked on a prince in "Hamlet," a king in "[Charles I].," and a saint in "Becket."
A very handsome woman, descended from Mrs. Siddons and looking exactly like her, played the gipsy in "Olivia." The likeness was of no use, because the possessor of it had no talent. What a pity!
"Olivia" has always been a family play. Edy and [Ted] walked on the stage for the first time in the Court "Olivia." In later years Ted played Moses and Edy made her first appearance in a speaking part as Polly Flamborough, and has since played both Sophia and the Gipsy. My brother Charlie's little girl Beatrice made her first appearance as Bill, my sister [Floss] played Olivia on a provincial tour, and my sister Marion played it at the Lyceum when I was ill.
I saw Floss play it, and took from her a lovely and sincere bit of "business." In the third act, where the Vicar has found his erring daughter and has come to take her away from the inn, I had always hesitated at my entrance as if I were not quite sure what reception my father would give me after what had happened. Floss in the same situation came running in and went straight to her father, quite sure of his love if not of his forgiveness.
I did not take some business which Marion did on [Terriss]'s suggestion. Where Thornhill tells Olivia that she is not his wife, I used to thrust him away with both hands as I said—"Devil!"
"It's very good, Nell, very fine," said Terriss to me, "but believe me, you miss a great effect there. You play it grandly, of course, but at that moment you miss it. As you say 'Devil!' you ought to strike me full in the face."