There was some surprise when Mr. Daly produced Coppée’s _The Prayer_, for the usually buoyant Rehan had now to portray a thoroughly serious character. Yet, says Mr. Winter:[144] “No one acquainted with her nature was surprised at the elemental passion, the pathos, and the almost tragic power with which she expressed a devoted woman’s experience of affliction, misery, fierce resentment, self-conquest, self-abnegation, forgiveness and fortitude. She did not then, nor at any time, show herself to be a tragic actress, but she evinced great force and deep feeling.” It further strengthens one’s impression of Miss Rehan’s really triumphant versatility to read the records of her Lady Teazle, which subtly suggested the country girl within the fine lady; of her Letitia Hardy with “its intrinsic loftiness of woman’s spirit”; of her Jenny O’Jones, an irresistibly comic figure done in the spirit of frank farce; or of any of her half hundred impersonations in modern comedy, on which she lavished the spirit, the beauty, the technical proficiency that were always in evidence, whether or not the material she worked with was wholly deserving of her gifts. She was always ambitious, always a patient hard worker, and she never slighted her tasks. In 1884, when Miss Rehan and the reorganized Daly company had been working together for five years, they made their first visit to London, where they played a six weeks’ summer season at Toole’s Theatre. London did not take kindly either to Mr. Daly’s pieces from the German, which then formed their repertoire, or to Miss Rehan herself, whose style of acting was a surprise to conservative eyes. William Archer wrote in _The World_: “The style of Miss Ada Rehan is too crude and bouncing to be entirely satisfactory to an English audience. She makes Flos a painfully ill-bred young person,--surely not a fair type of the American girl; and her way of emphasizing her remarks by making eyes over the footlights is certainly not good comedy.”[145] Clement Scott, on the other hand, praised her. No great impression was made, on the whole, but two years later, (1886) when Mr. Daly again took his company to London, Miss Rehan really made a name for herself, although the plays were as yet what seem to us now paltry pieces for such an actress: _A Night off_, and _Nancy and Company_. At this time Mr. Daly offered his company in the English provincial cities and even ventured to present them in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris, where they met some success.