The first half-year of Irving’s management was, in accordance with old usage, broken into two seasons; the first ending on May 31 and the second beginning on June 1. This was the last time, except in the spring of 1881, that such an unnatural division of natural periods took place. After that, during the entire of his management the “season” lasted until the theatre closed. And as the coming of the hot weather was the time when, for the reason the theatre-going public left London, the theatre had to be closed, about the end of July became practically the time for recess. It had become an unwritten law that Goodwood closed the London theatre season, just as in Society circles the banquet of the Royal Academy, on the first Saturday in May, marked the formal opening of the London “season.” This made things very comfortable for the actors, who by experience came to count on from forty-six to forty-eight weeks’ salary in a year. This was certainly so in the Lyceum, and in some other theatres of recognised position. II The first season made great interest for the public. It was all fairly new to me, for except when I had been present at the first night of Wills’s _Medea_ played by Mrs. Crowe (Miss Kate Bateman) in July 1872 and had seen Irving in _The Lyons Mail_ in 1877 and had been at the performance and rehearsal of _Vanderdecken_ in 1878, I had not been into the theatre till I came officially. As yet I knew nothing at all of the audiences, from the management point of view. I soon found an element which had only anything like a parallel in the enthusiasm of the University in Dublin. Here was an audience that _believed_ in the actor whom they had come to see; who took his success as much to heart as though it had been their own; whose cheers and applause—whose very presence—was a stimulant and a help to artistic effort.