In 1882, prowling around the outskirts of London, Henry Irving had come upon an old derelict house in Brook Green, Hammersmith, then considered to be almost in the country. Irving’s performance as Mephistopheles caused William Winter to write a long essay on the art of this outstanding actor’s performance in which he said: ‘He fulfilled the conception of the poet in one essential and transcended it in another'. The only criticism which Winter allowed himself was that possibly the production of Faust was so magnificent that it might have tended to obscure and overwhelm the fine intellectual force, the beautiful delicacy and the consummate art with which he embodied Mephistopheles. Irving was thinking of Faust, for with that production he had reached the height of prosperity.