[…] my cousin Jack stuck to the musical profession. Two of my songs he sang really beautifully and with very great success, i.e. “To Mary,” and “A Youth once loved a Maiden.” In fact, he sang them so often that one day I said to him, laughing - “You know, Jack, they really are not the only songs I have written.”

He was engaged by Sir Henry Irving to sing “Sigh no more Ladies,” when he produced Much Ado about Nothing at the Lyceum (his mother, of course, called it “Much Ado about Nothing at all”), and the way he sang that song was certainly among the most attractive things in the performance. Although as Balthazar he had to call himself “an ill singer,” the moment he had finished the last note I am quite certain that very few people in the house were ever found to agree with him.