An ordinary remark, truly, to stick in one's head for thirty-odd years! But it was made in such a very pretty voice—one of the most silvery voices I have ever heard from any woman except the late [Queen Victoria], whose voice was like a silver stream flowing over golden stones.
The smart little figure—Mrs. Bancroft was, above all things, petite—dressed in black—elegant Parisian black—came into a room which had been almost completely stripped of furniture. The floor was covered with Japanese matting, and at one end was a cast of the Venus of Milo, almost the same colossal size as the original.
Mrs. Bancroft's wonderful gray eyes, examined it curiously. The room, the statue, and I myself must all have seemed very strange to her. I wore a dress of some deep yellow woolen material which my little daughter used to call the "frog dress," because it was speckled with brown like a frog's skin. It was cut like a Viollet-le-Duc tabard, and had not a trace of the fashion of the time. Mrs. Bancroft, however, did not look at me less kindly because I wore aesthetic clothes and was painfully thin. She explained that they were going to put on "The Merchant of Venice" at the Prince of Wales's, that she was to rest for a while for reasons connected with her health; that she and Mr. Bancroft had thought of me for Portia.
Portia! It seemed too good to be true! I was a student when I was young. I knew not only every word of the part, but every detail of that period of Venetian splendor in which the action of the play takes place. I had studied Vecellio. Now I am old, it is impossible for me to work like that, but I never acknowledge that I get on as well without it.
Mrs. Bancroft told me that the production would be as beautiful as money and thought could make it. The artistic side of the venture was to be in the hands of Mr. [Godwin], who had designed my dress for Titania at Bristol.
"Well, what do you say?" said Mrs. Bancroft. "Will you put your shoulder to the wheel with us?"
I answered incoherently and joyfully, that of all things I had been wanting most to play in Shakespeare; that in Shakespeare I had always felt I would play for half the salary; that—oh, I don't know what I said! Probably it was all very foolish and unbusinesslike, but the engagement was practically settled before Mrs. Bancroft left the house, although I was charged not to say anything about it yet.
But theater secrets are generally secrets de polichinelle. When I went to [Charles Reade]'s house at Albert Gate on the following Sunday for one of his regular Sunday parties, he came up to me at once with a knowing look and said:
"So you've got an engagement."
"I'm not to say anything about it."