'', 1877 Gilchrist's first known stage appearance came by age 8 at the
Drury Lane Theatre in 1873 playing the Prince of Mushrooms in a play entitled,
Jack in the Box. Over the 1874–1875 Christmas season, she played
Harlequin in an all-children's cast of the
pantomime The Children of the Wood, an adaptation of a
Brothers Grimm fairy tale staged at the
Adelphi Theatre London. Two years later, she was the
harlequin in
Goody Two-Shoes at the same theater. Gilchrist was engaged at London's
Gaiety Theatre in 1879, at age 14, where she played numerous roles, beginning with Tiddi-widdi in an adaptation of
Gulliver and Colomba in
The Great Casmir by
Charles Lecocq and Henry S. Leigh, adapted from the French of J. Prevel and A. D. Saint Albin (both 1879). In 1880 she played Libby Ray in the
Benjamin Edward Woolf comic opera
The Mighty Dollar; Baron Montgiron in
The Corsican Brothers and Co., Limited by
F. C. Burnand and
H. P. Stephens; and Polly in
Bubbles by Charles L. Fawcett. She played Florence Dombey in
Captain Cuttle, adapted from Dicken's
Dombey and Son by
John Brougham; and Lord Lardida, Baron de Belgravia, in
Whittington and his Cat by Burnand (both in 1881);
Maid Marian in
Little Robin Hood by
Robert Reece (1882); Anne in the
Victorian burlesque Blue Beard; or, The Hazard of the Dye, by Burnand; Miranda in
Ariel, a parody of Shakespeare's
The Tempest; and Myrene in the Stephens and
Lutz burlesque
Galatea; or, Pygmalion Re-Versed (all in 1883); and Pauline in
Called There and Back,
Herman Charles Merivale's burlesque of the
Conway and
Carr play,
Called Back (1884). In the summer of 1886, Gilchrist turned 21 and came to America with the
Violet Cameron Comic Opera Company for an American tour that began at New York's
Casino Theatre with
The Commodore, an adaptation by
Henry Brougham Farnie of
Offenbach's,
Le Creol. From 27 December of that year she played Abdallah in
The Forty Thieves, a pantomime adaption of the classic by
E. L. Blanchard staged at the Drury Lane Theatre. ==Earl of Orkney==