George Loveday had for many years been Toole's right
hand, managing his business affairs, travelling with him not
only as agent but as friend, devoted to his interests, and to
the last in affectionate relations with him. Prior to his engage-
ment with Toole, he and his brother, Mr. H, J. Loveday, had
been managers on their own account They were among the
first to introduce English opera to the public, both excellent
musicians, and belonged to a well-known theatrical family.
Their fatlier acted with Edmund Kean, and their mother, who
sat at the bedside of poor (^eorge when he died, had played
with Mrs. Siddons. The old lady is over ninety, her faculties
undimmed, and no mother could have had a more devoted son
than the fine fellow whom she has had the affliction to see
carried to his grave.
III.
But I am taking the reader far beyond the date of this
chapter, and find it impossible not to do so, since I am writing
it literally with the sound of funeral bells in my ears. Had
not this work been announced and the date of its publication
fixed, I should have been inclined to postpone it, under the
depressing influence of the solemn cancelling of my appoint-
ment with George Loveday; but time and tide, and printers
and newspapers, must go on ; and we will therefore try and
pull ourselves together, as we do in the playhouse for the



33 REMINISCENCES OF /. L. TOOLE.
comedy that follows the more serious scenes, and so get back
to Orme Square on that sunny summer morning ten years ago.
IV.
