"It (Macbeth) is a most tremendous success, and the last three days' advanced booking has been greater than ever was known, even at the Lyceum. Yes, it is a success, and I am a success, which amazes me, for never did I think I should be let down so easily. Some people hate me in it; some, Henry among them, think it my best part, and the critics differ, and discuss it hotly, which in itself is my best success of all! Those who don't like me in it are those who don't want and don't like to read it fresh from Shakespeare, and who hold by the 'fiend' reading of the character.... One of the best things ever written on the subject, I think, is the essay of J. Comyns Carr. That is as hotly discussed as the new Lady Mac--all the best people agreeing with it. Oh dear! It is an exciting time!" [Illustration: NANCY OLDFIELD, HERMIONE, ALICE-SIT-BY-THE-FIRE, LADY CICELY, WAYNEFLETE _Copyrighted by Window and Grove_] From a letter I wrote to my daughter who was in Germany at the time: "I wish you could see my dresses. They are superb, especially the first one: green beetles in it, and such a cloak! The photographs give no idea of it at all, for it is in colour that it is so splendid. The dark red hair is fine. The whole thing is Rossetti--rich stained-glass effects. I play some of it well, but of course I don't do what I want to do yet. Meanwhile I shall not budge an inch in the reading of it, for that I know is right. Oh, it's fun, but it's precious hard work, for I by no means make her a gentle lovable woman' as some of 'em say. That's all pickles. She was nothing of the sort, although she was _not_ a fiend, and _did_ love her husband. I have to what is vulgarly called 'sweat at it,' each night." _Burne-Jones at "Macbeth"_ [Illustration: MISS ELLEN TERRY FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON HER LAST TOUR IN AMERICA _Copyrighted, 1907 by Helen Lohman_] The few people who liked my Lady Macbeth, liked it very much. I hope I am not vain to quote this letter from Lady Pollock: "... Burne-Jones has been with me this afternoon: he was at 'Macbeth' last night, and you filled his whole soul with your beauty and your poetry.... He says you were a great Scandinavian queen, that your presence, your voice, your movement, made a marvelously poetic harmony, that your dress was grandly imagined and grandly worn--and that he cannot criticise--he can only remember." [Illustration: SIR HENRY IRVING FROM A PORTRAIT GIVEN BY HIM TO MISS EVELYN SMALLEY IN 1896] But Burne-Jones by this time had become one of our most ardent admirers, and was prejudiced in my favour because my acting appealed to his _eye_. Still the drama is for the eye as well as for the ear and the mind. "_The Dead Heart_" Very early I learned that one had best be ambitious merely to please oneself in one's work a little--quietly I coupled with this the reflection that one "gets nothing for nothing, and damned little for sixpence!"