and overwhelmed—and looking it, which is worse! I always think," she concluded, "that a woman ought to have a large share in the designing and arranging of stage-dresses, for she can understand what is becoming far better than a man. Small matters of detail are carried out better by women tlian by men. And women, of course, have more patience and more perseverance."
But theatrical costume is a subject for a whole volume, not for a chapter merely, and I can touch but the fringe of it. I have felt tempted to dwell upon the past, and endeavour to trace the evolution of the idea of accurate costume on the stage from the day, perhaps, when the celebrated Mrs. Mattocks of Covent Garden copied the attire of Rubens's second wife in Vandyck's picture, so as to appear appropriately as the niece of the Governor of Bruges, in The Royal Merchant a play adapted from Beaumont and Fletcher. But, lacking the pen of the historian and the science of the psychologist, I have chosen the easier and more humble role of the gossip. Yet, perhaps, the elusive chatter of the actress's dressing-room may not be without its suggestive value, more vivid, possibly, than the utterings of the student, for its memories have the fragrance of yesterday. Before me as I write, secure under glass, together with its authentic pedigree, is the lace collar that Edmund Kean used to wear when he played Hamlet; yet it stirs no thrill in me because of Kean, as old Sir William Gower, in Pinero's Trelawny of the Wells was moved at sight of the chain Kean wore as Richard, because in his youth he had seen the great actor. But the mere thought of the soft lawn collar and cuffs that H. B. Irving wore with his
