"I should have thought you would look much better in white."
"Oh, no!" I said.
And then they dropped the subject for that day. It was clever of him!
The next day Lacy came up to me:
"You didn't really mean that you are going to wear black in the mad scene?"
"Yes, I did. Why not?"
"Why not! My God! Madam, there must be only one black figure in this play, and that's Hamlet!"
I did feel a fool. What a blundering donkey I had been not to see it before! I was very thrifty in those days, and the thought of having been the cause of needless expense worried me. So instead of the crêpe de Chine and miniver, which had been used for the black dress, I had for the white dress Bolton sheeting and rabbit, and I believe it looked better.
The incident, whether Henry was right or not, led me to see that, although I knew more of art and archaeology in dress than he did, he had a finer sense of what was right for the scene. After this he always consulted me about the costumes, but if he said: "I want such and such a scene to be kept dark and mysterious," I knew better than to try and introduce pale-colored dresses into it.
Henry always had a fondness for "the old actor," and would engage him in preference to the tyro any day. "I can trust them," he explained briefly.