Davies's grandmother, a Baptist by denomination, was of a more austere and religious turn of mind than her husband ... Davies once told me [Sitwell] that he remembered his grandmother smacking him severely after some manifestation of childish sin, and saying between blows,
`If—you—go—on—like—this,—you'll—be—no—better—than—that—young—Brodribb—cousin—of—yours,—who's—brought—disgrace—upon—the—family!''That—young—Brodribb—cousin' was, in fact, known to the theatre-going audiences all over the Englishspeaking world, as Henry Irving: but the old woman always referred to the stage as `The Devil's Playground', and that her relative was the idol of the whole country, acclaimed everywhere, to her signified nothing; indeed worse than nothing. The wages of sin were death, and not even a knighthood—the first ever conferred upon a member of his profession—could modify that well-known decree, or moderate the sentence of doom that it pronounced.
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