ONE day in February, shortly after the discussion which caused David to push his fist through the bedroom wall, he took me to Hereford to have a look round. It was a wise move as it turned out. He hired a car for the day: we did not have a car of our own. We could afford to hire cars all over the place at a price which bore no relation to value, but we could never afford to buy one: our affluence, like that of many actors, went hand in hand with a disastrous lack of capital. This hired car was nice and spruce, its red plastic seats nattily fitted over with transparent plastic loose covers, and its heater was very effective, so I sat there warm and benevolent, smiling at the passing countryside. It was a sunny cold day, and Joe was asleep on my knee. We had left Flora behind: she suffers terribly from carsickness. I am afraid that she is a very high-strung child.

I had been reading, the night before, about Garrick. It seemed that he had been born in Hereford, as had Kemble, Mrs. Siddons and Nell Gwynne, though of the four Garrick seemed to me to be the most interesting character. As he had seemed, apparently, to whoever was responsible for naming the new theatre, which was to be the Garrick Theatre. The old theatre, now long disused, had been the Kemble. I liked the idea of Garrick: he seemed to have been a happy man. And I liked what Samuel Johnson said about him. “Sir,” he said to Boswell or some other when the other complained of Garrick’s exuberance, “a man who has the nation to admire him every night may well expect to be somewhat elated.” And when he died, Johnson said that the gaiety of nations had been eclipsed. Fine phrases, and doubtless deserved. I also read about Garrick’s own festival, which he had held at Stratford, in honour of Shakespeare’s bicentenary, and which had been a disaster: the Avon had flooded and carried away the pavilions and the refreshments and all but the festive crew themselves. I wondered if anything as entertaingly disastrous would happen to Wyndham Farrar’s effort this year.