"There, there! not a word about it; don't even think of it. We shall expect you to dinner to-night, seven sharp. Ta, ta." And away he went, leaving me all the better for his sympathy.
When I went to star in the country, he produced "Foul Play," transformed into "The Scuttled Ship," at the Olympic, and a comedy taken from a piece of Sardou's, of which, though I saw it acted in Paris and Rouen (much better acted at Kouen than in Paris), I cannot recall the name. I believe both plays achieved a succès d'estime, but that was all.
A story was soon after this published in America, called "That Lass o' Lowrie's." It was written by a lady, Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, evidently an Englishwoman, for it was a very faithful picture of Lancashire life. Mr. Joseph Hatton and the late Mr. Mathison dramatized the book and produced it for a short time at one of the West-End theatres. Mr. Reade saw it, and was struck, not with the drama (although that, I have been assured, was a very good one), but with Miss Rose Leclerq, who made a great mark as the heroine; and he intimated that after a certain time had elapsed he should dramatize the subject himself. Here ensued another wordy warfare; Hatton and Mathison grumbled, but with the aid of a slight subsidy from Reade an amicable understanding was arrived at with them. Mrs. Burnett, however, was not so easily appeased; and it must be admitted she had the best of the argument. When Mr. Reade urged that every play he had done had been pirated in America, the irate authoress retorted that she had never pirated his plays, and therefore he had no right to pirate her story. In vain he offered to divide any emolument which might accrue with her. The lady remained obdurate, he remained obstinate; and once more he had recourse to the Amphitheatre at Liverpool for the production of "Joan,"—so he called his new play,—and again the ill luck which persistently attended his every attempt at management followed him.
I happened to be fulfilling a fortnight's engagement at the Theatre Royal, Manchester. To my astonishment and delight, Mr. Reade turned up at my rooms the morning of my arrival (his lodgings were but a stone's throw from ours). While we remained in Manchester we were inseparable. "Joan" was being acted at the Queen's Theatre there, by his company. He admitted frankly that it was a commercial failure; he could not understand the reason why, but there was the fact staring him in the face nightly in the shape of empty benches.
We were so fortunate as to "strike oil" in my play of "Valjean," taken from "Les Miserables," which, when last in Paris, I had obtained Victor Hugo's permission to dramatize. Guided only by practical results, Reade turned his back upon his own play and came to see ours nightly. After he had been once or twice, he began, after his old fashion, to take stock of the audience and to interpret the play through their smiles and tears and their applause. Evidently this popular barometer satisfied him, for that night at supper he proposed to me to come to town and open the unfortunate Queen's with "Valjean," at Christmas. He would provide a magnificent mise en scène, revise the play, and attach his name to it as joint author. He was eager for the fray, and wanted to go into it at once. Unfortunately, I had made other engagements, and was thus compelled to forego a chance which might have retrieved his losses and my own. At the end of my engagement in Manchester I had to go to Scotland, but, at his request, we prolonged our stay in order to see "Joan." After the play he took us home to supper, and then frankly asked me what I thought of the piece. I told him that I thought he had never written nobler lines or more graphic sketches of character, but that the barbarous and cacophonous dialect, the gloom, the squalor, the everlasting minor key which pervaded the entire drama, would prevent its ever becoming a popular success. In the fulness of time he
