As I knew him
exceedingly well, I begged on several occasions to have the secret of
the little black bag entrusted to me, but he always turned my question
aside. After his death, it turned out that the little bag was a fully
fitted-up medicine-chest, with remedies for use in every possible
contingency. Should he have fancied that he had caught a chill, a
tea-spoon of this; should his dressing-room feel over-hot, four drops
of that; should he encounter a bad smell, a table-spoonful of a third
mixture. Poor Cecil's interior must have been like a walking
drug-store. He was quite inimitable in eccentric character parts, his
"Graves" in _Money_ being irresistibly funny, and his "Baron Stein" in
_Diplomacy_ was one of the most finished performances we are ever
likely to see, a carefully stippled miniature, with every little detail
carefully thought out, touched up and retouched. I do not believe that
the English stage has even seen a finer _ensemble_ of acting than that
given by Kendal as "Julian Beauclerc," John Clayton as "Henry
Beauclerc," and Squire Bancroft as "Count Orloff" when the piece was
originally produced at the Hay-market, in the great "three-men" scene
in the Second Act of _Diplomacy_, the famous "Scene des trois hommes"
of Sardou's _Dora_; nothing on the French stage could beat it.
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