MISS FORTESCUE.
 From a Photograph. |
 From a Photo. by Hill & Saunders. |
ISS FORTESCUE at the early ages of four and eight displayed no especial tendencies 
towards the stage. Her early life was the ordinary one of an English country gentleman's daughter, while she became an adept at foreign languages, and conversant not only with the three "R's," but with two more—riding and rowing. At the former, indeed, she was "a wonder across country," and at the present time there is nothing she likes more than a "scamper," or a day on the river. Miss Fortescue made her first appearance on the stage as "Lady Ella" in Patience. In two years she was playing the heroine in Dan'l Druce, at the Court Theatre. Immediately after this she was engaged for a starring tour through England and America, and on her return from the United States, Mr. Augustus Harris secured her services for Drury Lane Theatre, where she was probably the youngest "leading lady" ever engaged at the national theatre. In 1886 she started on her first theatrical enterprise on her own account. Since then she has been her own manageress, and has conducted her long tours and short London seasons with unvarying and increasing success. Miss Fortescue was always a beautiful woman, and in the last two or three years her talent and resource in her art have been been so generally admitted as to have passed beyond the region of dispute. She is a brilliant and remarkably intellectual conversationalist.
