“Perhaps he is, originally. Now you speak of it. Do you know if Carr is an Irish name? Comyns is at any rate and then most of our celebrated wits have been Irishmen--our Sheridans and our Goldsmiths?” With this pleasing tribute to my husband I may fitly close these theatrical reminiscences, though I like to recall that Joe and Henry Irving had appreciations of one another on a graver side to which some pages in _Eminent Victorians_ testify, and many are the pleasant holiday hours we spent as his guests both abroad and at home. He used to visit the old-world village of Winchelsea by Rye, where we had a cottage close to the ancient gateway of the town--afterwards sold to Ellen Terry. But the most notable of our joint trips was that to Nuremberg in search of material for the production of _Faust_. This was the first occasion on which I made a hit with my designing of Ellen Terry’s dresses, which I afterwards did for nearly twenty years. Being the only one of the party speaking German, I made many bargains in the shops and on the old market-place chiefly under Joe’s direction but also by request of Henry or Nell. She bought me a solid housewife’s copper jug in the market, and Joe and I secured an old ivory casket which she accepted from us and in which she kept the gew-gaws in the “Jewel Scene.” She and I had a delightful evening in the old Castle, I having persuaded a little girl-custodian to let us in after hours so that we saw the place in solemn loneliness with the sunset glow reddening the red roofs of the city far below us. I won the admission by a highly coloured description of the actress in Shakespeare, which the child actually had seen in her own town; and Nell promised her a signed photograph--punctually posted on our return. This excursion was made while Joe and Henry were away at Rothenburg, which my husband had insisted that Irving must see on account of its unique preservation of untouched city-wall and battlements. It was a memorable tour, of which Joe tells some interesting anecdotes in _Coasting Bohemia_. In speaking of the long drives which his host loved and so greatly preferred to any kind of exercise, Joe does not confess, however, how impossible he found it to keep himself awake. “We sit side by side and sleep for hours!” he would tell me regretfully when he came home. And I don’t suppose it occurred to any of us then that it was the best rest that tired theatrical managers could have. CHAPTER IX ENTERTAINMENT