I trembled to think of what might have happened to the actress if the chair had fallen to the floor while she occupied it. I suppose the reason for its position having changed from that in which it was originally placed was that the actress, who could hardly be described as a reposeful “sitter,” had shifted it in her restlessness. The carpenter had omitted to fix the fillet which should have been placed to preclude any risk of the chair falling from its elevated position. Only a few months ago Lady Bancroft, speaking at a matinée in aid of King George’s Pension Fund for Actors, made an amusing allusion to Madame Tussaud’s. She had just been listening to the dialogue between Peg Woffington, played by Irene Vanburgh, and Triplet, and she said: “When it was arranged that my husband should come from his retirement to play the part of Triplet, we were very much exercised where to find his old costume. “Then, all at once, we remembered the last time we saw that costume was at Madame Tussaud’s. “I said, ‘Of course you have been melted down by this time.’ “He said, ‘What do you think they have made of me? Perhaps Marshal Foch, perhaps President Poincaré, perhaps President Wilson. I only hope my figure has not been melted down to something in the Chamber of Horrors.’” None laughed more heartily than the King at Lady Bancroft’s story. It was in the spring of 1889, that the Bancrofts gave me several sittings. The merry laughter of the actress made the time pass quickly and my work a real joy. [Illustration: SIR SQUIRE BANCROFT Whose model as Triplet, together with the model of Lady Bancroft as Peg Woffington, are on exhibition at Madame Tussaud’s.] When the models of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft were added to the Exhibition, in the characters of Peg Woffington and Triplet in _Masks and Faces_, reference to this was made in our Easter announcement. Sir Squire Bancroft tells the following story in this connection: “A young man from the country visited the Exhibition on Easter Monday of that year, and went straight to the Chamber of Horrors. He said he wanted to see the ‘_squire who murdered a triplet_’!” They tell me that Henry Irving came to see his portrait a year after I had modelled him, but, unfortunately, I missed the great actor that day. Mention of Irving takes my mind back rather a long way, to the time when I had the pleasure of introducing his model and that of Miss Ellen Terry to the Exhibition. They were on the eve of making their first journey across the Atlantic, and they cheerfully consented to enable me to let the public see them in their absence. Irving was an ideal sitter, as might be expected of a great actor. He adapted himself to my requirements in every detail, and gave me to feel that he took great pleasure in my work. I very soon became aware of Irving’s kindliness of heart and his sympathy with an artist at his labours.