It
was his part, on the ground of his Italian, to see and arrange with
the actor; it was mine to write in the ACADEMY a notice of the
first performance of MACBETH. Fleeming opened the paper, read so
far, and flung it on the floor. 'No,' he cried, 'that won't do.
You were thinking of yourself, not of Salvini!' The criticism was
shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through ignorance; it was not of
myself that I was thinking, but of the difficulties of my trade
which I had not well mastered. Another unalloyed dramatic pleasure
which Fleeming and I shared the year of the Paris Exposition, was
the MARQUIS DE VILLEMER, that blameless play, performed by
Madeleine Brohan, Delaunay, Worms, and Broisat - an actress, in
such parts at least, to whom I have never seen full justice
rendered. He had his fill of weeping on that occasion; and when
the piece was at an end, in front of a cafe, in the mild, midnight
air, we had our fill of talk about the art of acting.
But what gave the stage so strong a hold on Fleeming was an
inheritance from Norwich, from Edward Barron, and from Enfield of
the SPEAKER.
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