What a sensation it was, too, to be untrammeled by time! Actors must take care of themselves and their voices, husband their strength for the evening work, and when it is over they are too tired to do anything! For the first time I was able to put all my energies into living. Charles Lamb says, I think, that when he left the East India House, he felt embarrassed by the vast estates of time at his disposal, and wished that he had a bailiff to manage them for him, but I knew no such embarrassment. I began gardening, "the purest of human pleasures"; I learned to cook, and in time cooked very well, though my first essay in that difficult art was rewarded with dire and complete failure. It was a chicken! Now, as all the chickens had names--Sultan, Duke, Lord Tom Noddy, Lady Teazle, and so forth--and as I was very proud of them as living birds, it was a great wrench to kill one at all, to start with. It was the murder of Sultan, not the killing of a chicken. However, at last it was done, and Sultan deprived of his feathers, floured, and trussed. I had no idea _how_ this was all done, but I tried to make him "sit up" nicely like the chickens in the shops. He came up to the table looking magnificent--almost turkey-like in his proportions. "Hasn't this chicken rather an odd smell?" said our visitor. "How can you!" I answered. "It must be quite fresh--it's Sultan!" However, when we began to carve, the smell grew more and more potent. _I had cooked Sultan without taking out his in'ards!_ There was no dinner that day except bread-sauce, beautifully made, well-cooked vegetables, and pastry like the foam of the sea. I had a wonderful hand for pastry! My hour of rising at this pleasant place near Mackery End in Hertfordshire was six. Then I washed the babies. I had a perfect mania for _washing_ everything and everybody. We had one little servant, and I insisted on washing her head. Her mother came up from the village to protest. "Never washed her head in my life. Never washed any of my children's heads. And just look at their splendid hair!" After the washing I fed the animals. There were two hundred ducks and fowls to feed, as well as the children. By the time I had done this, and cooked the dinner, the morning had flown away. After the midday meal I sewed. Sometimes I drove out in the pony-cart. And in the evening I walked across the common to fetch the milk. The babies used to roam where they liked on this common in charge of a bulldog, while I sat and read. I studied cookery-books instead of parts--Mrs. Beeton instead of Shakespeare!