UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA TH NOVA HIBERNIA HE first hint we had of it was in a manner unlooked-for enough. My old friend, Captain Costigan, looked in at the Cave of Harmony the other night, after seeing the Fotheringay home from one of her undoubted triumphs. I should mention that she had just come in from the provinces and had made a brilliant rentrée. The London critics still hesitated as to the true value of her acting, blinded by the very splendour of her "janius," as Costigan would have it, but in spite of their flimsy reservations, she went on her conquering way. The metropolis was now at her feet. Never did she seem more beautiful; never was her impassive self-content more strikingly manifest. Her admirers, enviously dubbed the Costigan claque, called it a divine lan 3 10 VIMU guor, the repose of genius and conscious power. Her detractors affirmed that it was mere animal stupidity; that she continued to act, as in the days of Mr. Thackeray, with an utter incapability of real passion—some of them even said, with a very slight degree of common intelligence. Howbeit, the Siddons herself did not compel all suffrages, and as the Captain finely said, there is always a skulking cloud whose office it is to shut out the sunthough, perhaps, the moon would be a neater simile. On this night of my story the Fotheringay had played Juliet in a manner worthy of the best traditions of the stage. I myself had it on the excellent authority of the Captain, whose moistened and whose tongue eyes tripped a little as he recounted for us the fervid encomiums of the foyer. A whisper went round the company that a certain young gentleman of good family-a Mr. Pendennis, I think, and a nephew of the famous clubman --had been hard hit by the Fotheringay; and it was added that the éclat of this night's performance would probably clinch the conquest. Captain Costigan hears well when he likes, but of this piece of gossip he seemed discreetly oblivious. Something in my old friend's manner betokened that there was more on his mind than the latest triumph of his gifted daughter, and we were soon to learn what it was. I may say that the late Mr. Thackeray, in his memoirs of Captain Costigan, has hinted obscurely at the alleged bibulous propensities of that gallant gentleman and soldier. In this I am afraid Mr. Thackeray, with all his genius, betrayed the insular prejudice of his nation. It is also true that in his printed recollections Mr. Thackeray (who wrote much on high life and plumed himself on his acquaintance with gentility), sometimes fell into the vulgar habit of referring to the Captain as "Cos." The familiarity is one of which I was never a witness, and I doubt if Mr. Thackeray would have taken the liberty with his living sub |