‘Collectively and severally,’ Nigel had written, ‘the Ancreds, all but one, are over-emotionalized. Any one attempting to describe or explain their behaviour must keep this characteristic firmly in mind, for without it they would scarcely exist. Sir Henry Ancred is perhaps the worst of the lot, but, because he is an actor, his friends accept his behaviour as part of his stock-in-trade, and apart from an occasional feeling of shyness in his presence, seldom make the mistake of worrying about him. Whether he was drawn to his wife (now deceased) by the discovery of a similar trait in her character, or whether, by the phenomenon of marital acclimatization, Lady Ancred learnt to exhibit emotion with a virtuosity equal to that of her husband, cannot be discovered. It can only be recorded that she did so; and died.

‘Their elder daughters, Pauline (Ancred played in The Lady of Lyons in ’96) and Desdemona (Othello, 1909), and their sons, Henry Irving (Ancred played a bit-part in The Bells) and Claude (Pauline’s twin) in their several modes, have inherited or acquired the emotional habit. Only Thomas (Ancred was resting in 1904 when Thomas was born) is free of it. Thomas, indeed, is uncommonly placid. Perhaps for this reason his parent, sisters, and brothers appeal to him when they hurt each other’s feelings, which they do punctually, two or three times a week, and always with an air of tragic astonishment.

‘Pauline, Claude, and Desdemona, in turn, followed their father’s profession. Pauline joined a northern repertory company, married John Kentish, a local man of property, retired upon provincial glories more enduring than those she was likely to enjoy as an actress, and gave birth to Paul and, twelve years later, Patricia (born 1936 and known as Panty). Like all Ancred’s children, except Thomas, Pauline was extremely handsome, and has retained her looks.

‘Claude, her twin, drifted from Oriel into the OUDS, and thence, on his father’s back, into romantic juveniles. He married the Hon Miss Jenetta Cairnes, who had a fortune, but never, he is fond of saying, has understood him. She is an intelligent woman. They have one daughter, Fenella.

‘Desdemona, Sir Henry’s fourth child (aged thirty-six at the time of this narrative), has become a good emotional actress, difficult to place, as she has a knack of cracking the seams of the brittle slickly drawn roles for which West-End managements, addled by her beauty, occasionally cast her. She has become attached to a Group, and appears in pieces written by two surrealists, uttering her lines in such a heart-rending manner that they seem, even to Desdemona herself, to be fraught with significance. She is unmarried and has suffered a great deal from two unhappy love affairs.