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52 Memoirs tells how he endeavoured to tempt her by fine clothes, providing for one of her parts a most "elegant sack-back, all over silver trimmings." He did not understand any more than Garrick the nature of the woman with whom he had to deal. On the 17th May she acted Semiramis for her benefit, and the York season closed. Palmer, of the Bath Theatre, had not forgotten Henderson's strong recommendation, and, finding at last an opening, he concluded an engagement with her.

Bath was first in importance among the provincial theatres. The audience, indeed, was very largely composed of the London "fashionables," who came to drink the waters; no "sack-backs," therefore, "all over silver trimmings," were allowed to interfere with her determination, for, although in her petulant moments she was wont to declare that she preferred the country, and had been treated so cruelly in London she never would play there again, in her heart she was resolved to rule supreme on those boards she had once trod with Garrick.

"I now made an engagement at Bath," she says in her Memoranda. "There my talents and industry were encouraged by the greatest indulgence, and, I may say, with some admiration. Tragedies which had been almost banished, again resumed their proper interest; but still I had the mortification of being obliged to personate many subordinate characters in comedy, the first being, by contract, in the possession of another lady. To this I was obliged to submit, or to forfeit a portion of my salary, which was only three pounds a week. Tragedies were now becoming more and more fashionable. This was favourable to my cast of powers; and, whilst I laboured hard, I began