Mrs. Byron, under her stage name of Adelaide Gisborne, was now, for
the second time in her career, much talked of in London, where she
had benn for many years almost forgotten. The metropolitan managers
of her own generation had found that her success in new parts was
very uncertain; that she was more capricious than the most petted
favorites of the public; and that her invariable reply to a business
proposal was that she detested the stage, and was resolved never to
set foot upon it again. So they had managed to do without her for so
long that the younger London playgoers knew her by reputation only
as an old-fashioned actress who wandered through the provinces
palming herself off on the ignorant inhabitants as a great artist, and boring them with performances of the plays of Shakespeare. It suited Mrs. Byron well to travel with the nucleus of a dramatic company from town to town, staying a fortnight in each, and repeating half a dozen characters in which she was very effective, and which she knew so well that she never thought about them except when, as indeed often happened, she had nothing else to think about. Most of the provincial populations received her annual visits with enthusiasm. Among them she found herself more excitingly applauded before the curtain, her authority more despotic behind it, her expenses smaller, and her gains greater than in London, for which she accordingly cared as little as London cared for her. As she grew older she made more money and spent less. When she complained to Cashel of the cost of his education, she was rich. Since he had relieved her of that cost she had visited America, Egypt, India, and the colonies, and had grown constantly richer. From this great tour she had returned to England on the day when Cashel added the laurels of the Flying Dutchman to his trophies; and the next Sunday's paper had its sporting column full of the prowess of Cashel Byron, and its theatrical column full of the genius of Adelaide Gisborne. But she never read sporting columns, nor he theatrical ones.
The managers who had formerly avoided Mrs. Byron were by this time
dead, bankrupt, or engaged in less hazardous pursuits. One of their
successors had lately restored Shakespeare to popularity as signally
as Cashel had restored the prize ring. He was anxious to produce the
play of "King John," being desirous of appearing as Faulconbridge, a
part for which he was physically unfitted. Though he had no
suspicion of his unfitness, he was awake to the fact that the
favorite London actresses, though admirable in modern comedy, were
not mistresses of what he called, after Sir Walter Scott, the "big
bow wow" style required for the part of Lady Constance in
Shakespeare's history. He knew that he could find in the provinces
many veteran players who knew every gesture and inflection of voice
associated by tradition with the part; but he was afraid that they
would remind Londoners of Richardson's show, and get Faulconbridge
laughed at. Then he thought of Adelaide Gisborne. For some hours
after the idea came to him he was gnawed at by the fear that her
performance would throw his into the shade. But his confidence in
his own popularity helped his love of good acting to prevail; and he
made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some
journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay
of the grand school of acting, and to invent or republish anecdotes
of Mrs. Siddons.
This time Mrs. Byron said nothing about detesting the stage. She had
really detested it once; but by the time she was rich enough to give
up the theatre she had worn that feeling out, and had formed a habit
of acting which was as irksome to shake off as any other habit. She
also found a certain satisfaction in making money with ease and
certainty, and she made so much that at last she began to trifle
with plans of retirement, of playing in Paris, of taking a theatre
in London, and other whims. The chief public glory of her youth had
been a sudden triumph in London on the occasion of her first
appearance on any stage; and she now felt a mind to repeat this and
crown her career where it had begun. So she accepted the manager's
offer, and even went the length of reading the play of "King John" in order to ascertain what it was all about.