The Stratford-on-Avon visit had inspired me with the feeling that there was life in the old 'un yet, and had distracted my mind from the strangeness of no longer being at the Lyceum permanently with Henry Irving. But there seemed to be nothing ahead, except two matinées a week with him at the Lyceum, to be followed by a provincial tour in which I was only to play twice a week, as Henry's chief attraction was to be "Faust." This sort of "dowager" engagement did not tempt me. Besides, I hated the idea of drawing a large salary and doing next to no work. So when Mr. Tree proposed that I should play Mrs. Page (Mrs. Kendal being Mrs. Ford) in "Merry Wives of Windsor" at His Majesty's, it was only natural that I should accept the offer joyfully. I telegraphed to Henry Irving, asking him if he had any objection to my playing at His Majesty's. He answered: "Quite willing if proposed arrangements about matinées are adhered to." I have thought it worth while to give the facts about this engagement, because so many people seemed at the time and afterwards to think that I had treated Henry Irving badly by going on playing in another theatre, and that theatre one where a certain rivalry with the Lyceum as regards Shakespearian productions had grown up. There was absolutely no foundation for the rumors that my "desertion" caused further estrangement between Henry Irving and me. "Heaven give you many, many merry days and nights," he telegraphed to me on the first night, and after that first night, the jolliest that I ever saw, he wrote delighting in my success. It was a success, there was no doubt about it. Some people accused the "Merry Wives" of rollicking and "mafficking" overmuch, but these were the people who forgot that we were acting in a farce, and that farce is farce, even when Shakespeare is the author. The audience at first used to seem rather amazed. This thwacking, rough-and-tumble, Rabelaisian horse-play Shakespeare? Impossible! But as the evening went on we used to capture even the most civilized, and force them to return to a simple Jacobian frame of mind. In my later career I think I have had no success like this. Letters rained on me--yes, even love-letters, as if, to quote Mrs. Page, it were still "the holiday-time of my beauty." As I would always rather make an audience laugh than see them weep, it may be guessed how much I enjoyed the hearty laughter at His Majesty's during the run of the madcap absurdity of "Merry Wives of Windsor." [Illustration: MISS TERRY'S GARDEN AT WINCHELSEA; FROM A PHOTOGRAPH GIVEN BY HER TO MISS EVELYN SMALLEY] On the nineteenth of July, 1902, I acted at the Lyceum for the last time, although I did not know it then. These last Lyceum days were very sad. The reception given by Henry to the Indian princes who were in England for the Coronation was the last flash of the splendid hospitality which had for so many years been one of the glories of the theatre.