There is something almost heroic, therefore, in the appearance of the young actress on the boards of Drury Lane at this particular juncture. Alone and unaided, against enormous odds, she saved the famous theatre, endeared to every lover of dramatic art, from artistic and financial ruin. She had hitherto proved herself to have indomitable industry and energy, to have all the qualities of a hard-working, painstaking artist; now she was suddenly to flash forth in all the splendour of her genius and power. And yet how simple and womanly she remained. There was no undue reliance on her own gifts, in spite of the indiscriminate praise that had been heaped on her at Bath by too zealous friends. She turned a deaf ear to Miss Seward—“all asterisks and exclamations,” and to Dr. Whalley—“all sighs and admiration”; but listened to the wise suggestions of Mr. Linley and of old Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, himself a retired actor with full knowledge of the stage and its requirements. She and they were afraid her voice was not equal to filling a large London theatre. “But we soon had reason to think,” she tells us, “that the bad construction of the Bath theatre, and not the weakness of my voice was the cause of our mutual fears.” Isabella, in Southerne’s pathetic play of _The Fatal Marriage_, was the part Sheridan recommended her to choose for her first appearance, and the selection showed his appreciative knowledge both of her powers and of the audience she was to act to; the combined tenderness, grief and indignation showing the variety and range of expression of which she was capable. Hamilton painted a picture of her in this part, dressed in deep black, holding her boy by the hand, and appealing for help to her father-in-law, that even now brings the tears to one’s eyes as one looks at it. Her son Henry, then eight years old, acted with her. It is said that, observing his mother at rehearsal in the agonies of the dying scene, he took the fiction for reality, and burst into a flood of tears. She herself for the fortnight before her appearance suffered from nervous agitation more than can be imagined. The whole account of her mental state is best told in her own words. “No wonder I was nervous before the _memorable_ day on which hung my own fate and that of my little family. I had quitted Bath, where all my efforts had been successful, and I feared lest a second failure in London might influence the public mind greatly to my prejudice, in the event of my return from Drury Lane, disgraced as I formerly had been. In due time I was summoned to the rehearsal of Isabella. Who can imagine my terror? I feared to utter a sound above an audible whisper; but by degrees enthusiasm cheered me into a forgetfulness of my fears, and I unconsciously threw out my voice, which failed not to be heard in the remotest part of the house by a friend who kindly undertook to ascertain the happy circumstance.