Empty chairs

These pages are mainly concerned with men and women who, in days gone by, have done my wife and me the honour to sit at our table, and have now left us. I think of their Empty C...

It is bewildering to contrast the modest fees earned in Jenny Lind's day, and by gifted creatures like Malibran, Grisi and Mario (the pair sang in large houses for about thirty...

Archdeacon Wilberforce--who belonged to the 1841 "Vintage"--was also our friend. He drew large congregations to the church of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster--that odd-look...

When I was a struggling country actor in Liverpool, so far back as 1864, I made the acquaintance of a struggling barrister on the {62} Northern Circuit. His name was Charles Rus...

I was never really intimate with Alma Tadema, although I knew him for many years, beginning with the time when he lived in Regent's Park. Owing to an explosion of gunpowder on t...

Some ten years ago, James became a British subject--many people, I dare say, have thought him to have always been one--and in return {102} England rightly bestowed upon him the...

Few more attractive men have graced a table than Lord Rowton: we knew him first as Montagu Corry. Later on he became a next door neighbour: our No. was 18, his 17. In his courtl...

After giving up diplomacy he entered Parliament; at one time represented Northampton with Bradlaugh. I think it was then he became known as "Labby," and a sort of licensed clown...

From my childhood I have always looked {160} upon Macready as the head of my craft, and regarded him with the reverence a young curate would feel, I suppose, towards the Archbis...

"The sadness I feel at the prospect of never again working under your management is far too genuine for me to endeavour to convey it {179} by any conventional expressions of reg...

Willard had an ambition to build a theatre at the top of Lower Regent Street, where the County Fire Office, so long a London landmark, stood; but, granting the site to have been...

It may be that for the early withdrawal from triumphant scenes of the great gifts of so famous an actress I was to blame--if blame there was. I plead excuse in a painful {218} r...

No play of its length has ever excited more attention than _Sweethearts_. Pages could be filled with the chorus of praise which swelled from the press. One leading critic wrote...

Pinero, Sir Arthur W., 14, 202; _Lords and Commons_, 177; _The Profligate_, 199; knighthood conferred, 200; _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, 203-207; _The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith_,...