This was the person whom Irving had reproduced in Digby Grant. Long before, he had met him at McHenry’s. With that “seeing eye” of his he had marked his personality down for use, and with that marvellous memory, which in my long experience of him never failed him, was able to reproduce with the exactness of a “Chinese copy” every jot and tittle appertaining to the man, without and within. His tall, gaunt, slightly stooping figure; his scanty hair artfully arranged to cover the ravages of time; the cunning, inquisitive eyes; the mechanical turning of the head which becomes the habit of the deaf; the veiled voice which can do everything but express truth—even under stress of sudden emotion. Years after _Two Roses_ had had its run at the Vaudeville and elsewhere I went to see Wikoff when he was ill in a humble lodging. In answer to my knuckle-tap he opened the door himself. For an instant I was startled out of my self-possession, for in front of me stood the veritable Digby Grant. I had met him already a good many times, but always in the recognised costume of morning or evening. Now I saw him as Irving had represented him; but I do not think he had ever seen him as I saw him at that moment. I believe that the costume in which he appeared in that play was the result of the actor’s inductive ratiocination. He had studied the individuality so thoroughly, and was so familiar with not only his apparent characteristics but with those secret manifestations which are in their very secrecy subtle indicators of individuality grafted on type, that he had re-created him—just as Cuvier or Owen could from a single bone reconstruct giant reptiles of the Palæozoic age. There was the bizarre dressing-jacket, frayed at the edge and cuff, with ragged frogs and stray buttons. There the three days’ beard, white at root and raven black at point. There the flamboyant smoking-cap with yellow tassel, which marks that epoch in the history of ridiculous dress out of which in sheer revulsion of artistic feeling came the Pre-Raphaelite movement. [Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS DIGBY GRANT IN “TWO ROSES” _Drawing made in his dressing-room by Fred Barnard_, 1870 ] Irving had asked me to bring with me to Wikoff some grapes and other creature comforts, for which the poor old man was, I believe, genuinely grateful; but in the course of our chat he told me that Irving had “taken him off” for “that fellow in the _Two Roses_.” Wikoff did not seem displeased at the duplication of his identity, but rather proud of it.