I contrasted his punctuality, when he came to see "King Lear," with the unpunctuality of Lord Randolph Churchill, who came to see the play the very next night with a party of men friends and arrived when the first act was over. Lord Randolph was, all the same, a great admirer of Henry Irving. He confessed to him once that he had never read a play of Shakespeare's in his life, but that after seeing Henry act he thought it was time to begin. A very few days later he astonished us with his complete and masterly knowledge of at least half a dozen of the plays. He was a perfect person to meet at a dinner or supper--brilliantly entertaining, and queerly simple. He struck one as being able to master any subject that interested him, and, once a Shakespeare performance at the Lyceum had fired his interest, there was nothing about that play, or about past performances of it, which he did not know. His beautiful wife, now Mrs. George Cornwallis West, wore a dress at supper one evening which gave me the idea for the Lady Macbeth dress, afterwards painted by Sargent. The bodice of Lady Randolph's gown was trimmed all over with green beetles' wings. I told Mrs. Comyns Carr about it, and she remembered it when she designed my Lady Macbeth dress. The present Princess of Wales, when she was Princess May of Teck, used often to come to the Lyceum with her mother, Princess Mary, and to supper in the Beefsteak Room. In 1891 she chose to come as her birthday treat, which was very flattering to us. A record of those Beefsteak Room suppers would be a pleasant thing to possess. I have such a bad memory. I see faces round the table--the face of Liszt among them--but when I try to think when it was, or how it was, the faces vanish. Singers were often among Henry Irving's guests in the Beefsteak Room--Patti, Melba, Calvé, Albani, and many others. I once watched Patti sing from behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. My impression from that point of view was that she was actually a _bird_. She could not help singing. Her head, flattened on top, her nose, tilted downwards like a lovely little beak, her throat, swelling and swelling as it poured out that extraordinary volume of sound, all made me think that she must have been a nightingale before she was transmigrated into a human being. I imagine that Tetrazzini, whom I have not yet heard, must have this bird-like quality.