STAGE MANAGING cxxvii 



meritoriously of the model. The last part I saw him play was 

 Triplet, and at first I thought it promised well. But alas ! the 

 boys went for a holiday, missed a train, and were not heard of 

 at home till late at night. Poor Fleeming, the man who never 

 hesitated to give his sons a chisel or a gun, or to send them 

 abroad in a canoe or on a horse, toiled all day at his rehearsal, 

 growing hourly paler, Triplet growing hourly less meritorious. 

 And though the return of the children, none the worse for their 

 little adventure, brought the colour back into his face, it could 

 not restore him to his part. I remember finding him seated on 

 the stairs in some rare moment of quiet during the subsequent 

 performances. ' Hullo, Jenkin,' said I, c you look down in the 

 mouth.' ' My dear boy,' said he, ' haven't you heard me ? I 

 have not one decent intonation from beginning to end.' 



But indeed he never supposed himself an actor ; took a part, 

 when he took any, merely for convenience, as one takes a hand 

 at whist ; and found his true service and pleasure in the more 

 congenial business of the manager. Augier, Racine, Shake- 

 speare, Aristophanes in Hookham Frere's translation, Sophocles 

 and ^Eschylus in Lewis Campbell's, such were some of the 

 authors whom he introduced to his public. In putting these 

 upon the stage, he found a thousand exercises for his ingenuity 

 and taste, a thousand problems arising which he delighted to 

 study, a thousand opportunities to make those infinitesimal im- 

 provements which are so much in art and for the artist. Our first 

 Greek play had been costumed by the professional costumier, 

 with unforgettable results of comicality and indecorum : the 

 second, the Trachinice of Sophocles, he took in hand himself, and 

 a delightful task he made of it. His study was then in anti- 

 quarian books, where he found confusion, and on statues and 

 bas-reliefs, where he at last found clearness ; after an hour or 

 so at the British Museum, he was able to master * the chiton, 

 sleeves and all ; ' and before the time was ripe, he had a theory of 

 Greek tailoring at his fingers' ends, and had all the costumes 

 made under his eye as a Greek tailor would have made them. 

 f The Greeks made the best plays and the best statues, and were 

 the best architects ; of course, they were the best tailors, too,' 



