On various occasions I also visited some not uninteresting theatres in London, strictly avoiding opera-houses, of course.  I was most attracted by the little Adelphi Theatre in the Strand, and I frequently made Prager and Luders go with me.  They acted some dramatised fairy-tales there under the title of Christmas.  One of the performances interested me particularly because it consisted of a subtly connected conglomeration of the most familiar tales, played straight through, with no break at the end of the acts.  It began with ‘The Goose that laid the Golden Eggs,’ and was transformed into ‘The Three Wishes’; this passed into ‘Red Riding Hood’ (with the wolf changed into a cannibal who sang a very comical little couplet), and finished as ‘Cinderella,’ varied with other ingredients.  These pieces were in every respect excellently mounted and played, and I gained a very good notion there of the imaginative fare in which the English people can find amusement.  I found the performances at the Olympic Theatre less simple and innocent.  Besides witty drawing-room pieces in the French style, which were very well played there, they acted fairy-tales such as the Yellow Dwarf, in which Hobson, an uncommonly popular actor, took the grotesque title-role.  I saw the same actor again in a little comedy called Garrick Fever, in which he ends by representing a drunken man who, when people insisted on taking him for Garrick, undertook the part of Hamlet in this condition.  I was greatly astonished by many audacities in his acting on this occasion.

A small out-of-the-way theatre in Marylebone was just then trying to attract the public by Shakespeare’s plays.  I attended a performance of the Merry Wives there, which really amazed me by its correctness and precision.  Even a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre impressed me favourably, in spite of the great inferiority of the company, on account of its accuracy and of the scenic arrangements, which were no doubt an inheritance from the Garrick tradition.  But I still remember a curious illusion in connection with this:  after the first act I told Luders, who was with me, how surprised I was at their giving the part of Romeo to an old man, whose age must at least be sixty, and who seemed anxious to retrieve his long-lost youth by laboriously adopting a sickly-sweet, feminine air.  Luders looked at the programme again, and cried, ‘Donnerwetter, it’s a woman!’ It was the once famous American, Miss Cushman.

In spite of every effort, I found it impossible to obtain a seat for Henry VIII at the Princess’s Theatre.  This play had been organised according to the new stage realism, and enjoyed an incredible vogue as a gorgeous spectacular piece, mounted with unusual care.