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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"CARRY ON"
Home again early in 191 6 just in time to welcome John on his first leave from France and the trenches ! Oh, but it was splendid to see the boy safe and sound and grown bigger and stronger than ever ! He was now a captain, having been promoted several months before. We had a few days at the Glen together and spoke of the many things we would do "after the war." A list of provincial dates kept me as busy as usual and in the late autumn I went into my first Revue at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London. My first — and my last. "Three Cheers" was quite as good a show as most successful revues are but somehow I never felt myself thoroughly happy in it. My work as an artiste is too individual for revue. Ethel Levey and I had some excellent scenes in "Three Cheers" and one of the big hits in the piece was my war-song "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." This number sent the audience into hysterical enthusiasm at every performance ; the chorus was always taken up and shouted vociferously. A company of Scots Guards in full uniform marched on to the stage at the finish of the song, the final scene, before the fall of the curtain, being most war-like and inspiring. I put my whole soul into the singing of this song. John was never out of my mind from the opening bars till the last — it was of him and his gallant boys of the Fifty-first I was singing. Yet, as I have said, I never was at happy ease in this revue. Often I had fits of the most violent depression. These were not altogether dissociated from the daily publication of tremendously long lists of British casualties. I dreaded to buy a newspaper. In the closing days of the year Nance went up to Scotland
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