I never heard hisses on the stage before or since; and though I was very well aware that on this occasion they were addressed neither to me nor to my performance, I think if they had been the whistling of bullets (which I have also heard nearer than was pleasant) I could not have felt more frightened and furious.

Young Wade’s self-control and composure during the catastrophe of this play reminds me, by contrast, of a most ludicrous story my father used to tell of some unfortunate authoress, who, in an evil hour for herself and some friendly provincial manager, persuaded him to bring out an original drama of hers.

The audience (not a very discriminating or numerous one) were sufficiently appreciative to object extremely to the play, and large enough to make their objections noisily apparent.

The manager, in his own distress not unmindful of his poor friend, the authoress, sought her out to console her, and found her seated at the side scene with a glass of stiff brandy and water that some commiserating friend had administered to her for her support, rocking herself piteously to and fro, and, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, uttering between sobs and sips, in utter self-abasement, her peccavi in the form of oaths and imprecations of the finest Billingsgate vernacular (all, however, addressed to herself), that would have made a dragoon shake in his shoes.  The original form of which mea culpa seized the worthy manager with such an irresistibly ludicrous effect that he left the poor, guilty authoress without being able to address a syllable to her, lest he should explode in peals of laughter instead of decent words of condolence.

To accompany an author or authoress (I should think especially the latter) on the first night of the representation of their piece is by no means a pleasant act of duty or friendship.  I remember my mother, whose own nervous temperament certainly was extremely ill adapted for such an undertaking, describing the intolerable distress she had experienced on the occasion of the first representation of a piece called, I think, “Father and Son,” taken from a collection of interesting stories entitled “The Canterbury Tales,” and adapted to the stage by one of the Misses Lee, the sister authoresses of the Tales.  The piece was very fairly successful, but my mother said that though, according to her very considerable experience, the actors were by no means more imperfect in their parts than usual on a first night, her nervous anxiety was kept almost at fever height by poor Miss Lee’s incessant running commentary of “Ah! very pretty, no doubt—­very fine, I dare say—­only I never wrote a word of it!”

Lord Byron took the same story for the subject of his powerful play of “Werner,” in which Mr. Macready acted so finely, and with such great success.

I cannot imagine what possessed me in an unguarded hour to consent, as I did, to go with my friends, Messrs. Tom Taylor and Charles Reade, to see the first representation of a play of theirs called, I think, “The King’s Wager,” in which Charles the Second, Nell Gwynn, and the Plague were prominent characters.  Accidental circumstances prevented one of the gentlemen from coming with me, and I have often since wondered at my temerity in having placed myself in such a trying situation.