HENRY IRVING IN THE CHARACTER OF BECKETFrom a photograph byH. H. Cameron.To face page 237.
HENRY IRVING IN THE CHARACTER OF BECKETFrom a photograph byH. H. Cameron.To face page 237.
HENRY IRVING IN THE CHARACTER OF BECKET
From a photograph byH. H. Cameron.
To face page 237.
a fierce encounter between the message that was in him to convey and the restricted means that nature had placed at his disposal. His individuality betrayed at the first, and indelibly stamped upon every creation even to the close of his career, formed at first a serious weakness and again, finally, the saving element of strength in the work that he had to offer to the theatre.
There will always, I suppose, be a radical divergence of thought as to the proper attributes of an actor. To some minds it seems a self-evident proposition that the highest triumph of histrionic art is that in which the personality of the performer is most effectively concealed. To such critics completeness of disguise is completeness of victory, and in the region of comedy there is perhaps room for the confident assertion of this idea, for it is unquestionable that a full measure of enjoyment is conferred upon his audience by the actor’s successful assumption of alien idiosyncrasies of bearing and manner. In what is technically known in the theatre as character-acting, this is a goal of perfection that is rightly sought for; and although Irving proved himself on occasion a capable actor of character, it seems to me that his efforts in this direction bore with rare exception an impression of exaggeration.
And the reason is not far to seek. Conscious of his own peculiarities, so difficult if not impossible to efface, he was disposed to seek for concealment by forcing to the verge of the grotesque the personation of characteristics that were not his own. He was for this reason, to my thinking, never whollysuccessful as an actor of disguise; but at the opposite pole of histrionic achievement lies, I think, a faculty that is both rarer and greater, the faculty of revelation. Between these two spheres of disguise and revelation lie all the possibilities of the actor’s art. The choice of the one or of the other must be determined by the temperament of the actor, and in an equal measure by the response he receives from the temper of his audience. Speaking only for myself, I may frankly say that the greatest impressions I have received in the theatre have been made upon me by performers who never left me for a moment to imagine they were not themselves; but who, without greatly striving to realise the external attributes of the characters they were presenting, have succeeded in the power of constantly identifying themselves with the culminating passions of life. And of course these greater victories, if they are greater, belong in the nature of things to those actors whose ambition it is to present and interpret the deeper emotions—those emotions, I mean, so deeply seated in humanity that their occasional difference of expression counts as for nothing beside the intensity with which they are felt and experienced by all.
The justice of this view of the final victory of the actor’s art can only be decided by individual experience and individual impression. Looking back and recalling the performances that have most deeply moved me, I find myself suddenly reverting in recollection to those supreme moments in a great play or in a great impersonation in which the individual is forgotten, and the supreme power ofsounding the depths of human feeling is indelibly stamped upon the memory.
I saw Desclée, and greatly admired her; and I remember, long afterwards, when I witnessed Sarah Bernhardt’s performance ofFrou-frou, how much I thought it suffered in comparison with the original in those lighter and earlier scenes of the play in which the qualities of the heroine’s temperament have to be exhibited; and yet, when Madame Bernhardt came to the great scene in the third act, the recollection of Desclée, by a single stroke of genius, was almost effaced, and I can only think ofFrou-frouas it is recalled to me by that superb exhibition of passion in her encounter with Louise.
It was not Irving’s performance ofThe Bellsor the impression it yielded which satisfied me, even in those days, that he was a great actor. The picture as drawn, both by the author and by the actor, is so narrowly concentrated upon almost a single phase of criminal instinct and abnormal remorse, that it might well have been the outcome of an intelligence intense assuredly and yet confessedly limited in its outlook. It gave no assurance that the actor could touch the finer or deeper notes of feeling, and it was only when he afterwards playedHamletthat he convinced me of the possession of deeper imaginative powers.
À proposofHamlet, Irving used to tell a story that was characteristic of his imperturbable self-possession and was no less interesting in the light it throws upon the striking individuality of a youth who afterwards rose to a foremost position in public affairs. It was some few years after his performanceof the character in London that Irving found himself in Dublin at a time when the Duke of Marlborough, the father of Lord Randolph Churchill, was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.Hamletwas the play of the evening, and Lord Randolph, seated alone, occupied the viceregal box. When the second act was ended he went behind the scenes to Irving’s dressing-room and introduced himself to the actor. With an apology that was evidently sincere he expressed his regret that, owing to a reception at the Castle, he was unable to wait for the conclusion of the performance. He declared himself, however, intensely interested with what he had seen, and begged Irving to tell him in a few words, as his time was limited, how the play ended. Irving, as he told me, was at first so taken aback that he thought his visitor was indulging in a humorous sally at the expense of the immortal dramatist, but a quick glance at the young man’s earnest face sufficed to reassure him, and he then told Lord Randolph the outline of that concluding part of the story which his social engagement did not permit him to see represented upon the boards.
“When do you play it again?” inquired the young man of the actor.
“On Wednesday next,” answered Irving.
“I shall be there,” replied Lord Randolph, earnestly; and there assuredly he was from the rise of the curtain to its fall, in rapt attention to every succeeding scene of the tragedy.
At the conclusion he again went round to Irving’s room, even more enthusiastic than on the occasion of his previous visit; and, with a naïveté that was,I think, deeply characteristic of that power he afterwards displayed in public affairs—the power of swiftly appropriating the knowledge needful for every successive post he occupied—he made the frank avowal that, since their last meeting, he had read for himself, not onlyHamlet, but two or three other plays by the same author.
“And do you know, Mr. Irving,” he said, “I find them enormously interesting.”
Lord Randolph, I think, must have retained to the last his admiration of Irving’s talent as an actor, for I met him several times in later years at those little suppers in the Beefsteak Room of the Lyceum Theatre, which formed so memorable a feature of Irving’s management. Here, indeed, might be met many of the most notable people of the time, and amongst them, an almost constant figure in these pleasant gatherings, Irving’s life-long friend, J. L. Toole. The lasting friendship between these two men, so differently gifted and yet so enduringly allied, forms, I think, a touching tribute to certain great qualities of loyalty resident in them both.
My relations with Irving were not so close or so intimate during the later years of his life, and I prefer to think of him now as I knew him best, before the days of discouragement had overtaken him. To a man of his commanding personality and indomitable will, it was difficult to acknowledge, without a reluctance that sometimes bordered on resentment, the need of any resources but his own. The feeling, I think, was natural enough. He had carved out his career with such splendid courage and persistence that it must have been hard for himto realise, even when his powers were no longer at the full, that he had not the needful strength for the conflict. But this feeling of impatience with the position in which he found himself, pardonable enough in itself, made him, I think, sometimes suspicious of his friends. In my own case I know he entirely misconceived the motives with which I had sought to recapture for him his threatened position in the theatre he had made famous; but although such misunderstanding must of necessity at the time cause a measure of pain, it is to the closer friendship of earlier days that my memory now recurs, to the many years during which we were fast friends and staunch allies.
The other day I came across a little letter belonging to that happier time which I love to preserve as a touching record of the deeper side of Irving’s nature. Something had occurred, what precisely it was I now forget, which caused me to write to him in warm appreciation of the great services I always felt he had rendered to the stage, and my letter drew from him the following response:—
“Your letter,” he writes, “gave me much happiness. I know our hearts are one in many things, and I often wish we could sometimes be by the still waters and speak of things deeper even than could be spoken of before the best of other friends.”
There was a strong emotional element in Irving’s character that could scarcely have been suspected by those who did not know him intimately. Sometimes when he was deeply moved I have seen the tears start suddenly to his eyes, and at such moments his voice would often break and trembleas he sought to express the feeling that stirred him.
In the summer of 1886 he invited my wife and myself to accompany him on a visit to Nuremberg. Miss Ellen Terry and her daughter were of the party, and asFaustwas to be produced at the end of the year, our holiday had in part a practical purpose. Irving and I made an exhaustive study of the gardens of the old German city in order to find suitable material for the scenery of the play, the greater part of which was to be painted by Mr. Hawes Craven. We even carried our researches as far as Rothenberg-on-the-Tauber, a most beautiful example of a mediæval fortified town; and at the last Irving deemed it wise to summon Craven from London in order that he might make a few preparatory studies on the spot.
There was one incident of our journey that was rather unfortunate. I was acting as paymaster for the party, and at Cologne Irving cashed a circular note of£100, and the German notes we received in exchange were in my pocket-book as I took our tickets for Wurtzburg. At a junction on the route the train made a halt of some minutes to allow time for refreshments, and as I stood at the door of the buffet a young American of great politeness of manner questioned me as to the identity of Irving and Miss Terry. His tone was reverent and confidential, and as the crowd pressed through the doorway he apologised for jostling me in so unmannerly a fashion. When I retired for the night I realised that his apology was certainly not unneeded, for on emptying my pockets I foundthat my pocket-book was gone, and with it about £80 of Irving’s money and £30 of my own. We heard afterwards that a young gentleman answering to the description of my chance railway acquaintance had been doing a thriving trade on the Rhine steamers, and I daresay he still preserves my pocket-book as a souvenir of a prosperous day.
It is, I think, impossible for any one who has been closely associated with the modern theatre not to be impressed with the need of some worthier support of the drama than is afforded by the fickle and shifting taste of the public; and the career of Irving, both as an actor and a manager, only goes to emphasise a truth that had been repeatedly enforced by the fortunes of his predecessors. We pride ourselves in this country upon what is achieved by individual enterprise, but we do not always remember at what a cost such achievements are won. The harvest is ours, but the labourers who have reaped and stored it are too often but miserably rewarded. Charles Kean, at the close of his long struggle at the Princess’s, confessed that he left the theatre a poorer man than when he entered it; Phelps’ fortunes at Sadler’s Wells left him nothing to boast of; and Henry Irving, though he enjoyed at the zenith of his career a popularity greater than was accorded to either of his predecessors, had good reason before its close to realise that the motley public of a great capital is not to be counted upon for the enduring support of the more serious form of dramatic enterprise.
It is strange that there should be so much reluctance in the English mind to entertain the ideaof a National Theatre. In regard to other forms of art, the need of public support is recognised and accepted. The treasures of sculpture and painting accumulated in the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the South Kensington Museum owe their existence, in part at least, to the expenditure of the money of the people, and when the Royal Academy failed to initiate any comprehensive system of art teaching, it was undertaken by the nation. On every ground of public policy the claims of the drama might be urged with even greater plausibility. Its appeal as an educational force is even greater and more immediate, and as a humanising influence it is capable of reaching that larger class who are not yet prepared to appreciate the masterpieces of ancient art. Of the countless thousands who can enjoy Molière’s incomparable humour, how many are there who would pause before Leonardo’sMonna Lisain the Louvre? How many again in our own country, of those who are familiar with the tragedies of Shakespeare, ever find their way into the British Museum or the National Gallery?
And yet the prejudice against the public support of the theatre endures, and can only, I think, be broken down by the demands of the democracy. If a national theatre is to be established in England, it must realise that it has a national mission. The Theatre Français was established at a time when means of communication were difficult, and when, therefore, it was only possible to cater for the public of the metropolis. But under modern conditions a national theatre might, in a fuller and larger sense,serve the interests of the country as a whole. The great provincial cities might share the fruits of its labours; and when this is realised I cannot but think that, even though the Government may remain apathetic, the needful support for such an institution will not be wanting.
During the later years of his life upon the stage, Toole no longer held with any influence the attention of a London audience. In the earlier days of the Gaiety, where he had appeared as a dominant figure, his success in a material sense then far outstripped that of his comrade, and in some of Irving’s earlier engagements in the provinces Toole was his manager; but even in those later days, when the comedian had partly lost his hold upon the theatre, he remained a lovable and a fascinating figure in private life, and I am sure there was no one who welcomed with greater enthusiasm Irving’s steady advance to the front rank of his profession.
Perhaps the secret of Toole’s charm lay in an entire absence of pretence either social or intellectual. Something deeply human in his nature left him always at his ease in whatever society he might find himself; and, in a sense of humour which appreciated and detected without resentment the foibles of all whom he encountered, I think there are few men of his generation who could claim to be his equal. He laid no claim to any largeness of education, and I suppose there were few men who had read less, but in that knowledge that could be won without the aid of literature he was a genuine scholar. He read life truly and swiftly, genially and humorously. He knew it well because he loved it well. Put him whereyou would, in any company, however divergent their claims, and not an hour could pass before Toole had seized with quick enjoyment upon the separate characteristics of nearly every man at the table.
What he loved most, I think, outside of that part of his life which was spent in the theatre, was an aimless ramble in search of fun. Many and many such a vagrant day have I passed in his company, and not a barren one of them all. One such in particular I recall which may stand as a sample of many more. He had called for me quite early in the morning in his victoria, armed with only the naked suggestion that we should pay a visit to the city. For the city, therefore, we started, with no settled plan of operation, and it was only when we had reached the narrowest part of Thames Street that Toole seemed suddenly possessed with the outline of his programme for the day.
The portly figure of a uniformed porter standing at the gateway of some wholesale warehouse arrested his attention, and calling upon the driver to stop, he hobbled out of the carriage with his quaint lame walk, and at once engaged this forbidding-looking official in friendly converse. It was the time when the wheel-and-van tax had lately been imposed, and Toole drawing a note-book from his pocket declared to the amazed individual he was addressing that we had come down to the city to collect opinions on the subject. The man at first was stubbornly reluctant to enter into conversation, but Toole’s insinuating amiability of manner was not to be withstood, and he at last drew from this unfortunate individual anopinion, the purport of which I scarcely now remember, but which apparently, as Toole’s enthusiasm declared, clinched the subject.
“If that’s your opinion,” he said, “will you kindly see to it, as my friend and I are busy,” and with that enigmatic declaration he hobbled back to the victoria, leaving the unfortunate porter with a blank look of puzzled amazement on his face.
“To the Tower,” cried Toole to the coachman, “and as quickly as possible, for we have a lot of work to do.”
Arrived there, Toole at once, in tones of confidential secrecy, addressed the first Beefeater who stood by the gateway.
“What have you done?” he inquired in an anxious voice.
“What do you mean, sir?” said the man.
“I mean,” said Toole in a still more confidential tone, “what crime have you committed? You need not keep it from me and my friend.”
“Crime!” was the indignant answer. “I have committed no crime.”
“Come! come!” said Toole, suddenly assuming the air of a cross-examining counsel. “Do not dare to tell me that. You must have committed some crime, you know, or they would never have put you into a dress like that.”
Before the unfortunate man had recovered his self-possession we passed on into the Tower itself, and swiftly found ourselves among a party of eager sight-seers in the chamber where the Crown jewels are disposed.
It was a woman who, as I remember, wasexplaining to the eager throng the history of the different articles displayed, and when at the end of a long catalogue, she at last said, “And this is Ann Boleyn’s crown,” Toole, apparently suddenly overcome, burst into a flood of tears and leant against the wall in seemingly uncontrollable grief.
“Oh, sir,” inquired the poor woman in distress, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing! nothing!” replied Toole in broken accents. “Don’t mind me, but the fact is I have known the family so long.”
Such innocent sallies of almost child-like high spirits count for nothing in the telling, count for nothing, indeed, disassociated from the exuberant good-humour and the laughing, lovable nature of the man himself.
Our whole day was spent in innocent adventures of the same kind. We lunched in Billingsgate, where Toole persuaded the aged and greasy waiter that his purpose in visiting the city was to engage him as manager to a fashionable restaurant for fish dinners to be erected on the south bank of the Thames, immediately opposite the Savoy. And then by easy transition we passed on to the Custom House, which Toole had known well when he had been engaged as a clerk in the city; here he dismayed two venerable officials, busily engaged upon ledgers behind the brass grill, by suddenly demanding a brandy and soda, entirely ignoring their attempted explanation that it was not a bar, and vouchsafing—for all answer to their spluttering expostulations—only the careless reply that, if they were out of brandy, a whisky would do equally well.
It may seem foolish to suppose that any one could derive amusement from a day so idly spent, but those who risk this assumption labour under the misfortune of not having known Toole. His gaiety, when he was in the right mood, was infectious and irresistible, and yet, like all men of such exuberant high spirits, he was subject at times to moods of the deepest depression, moods which grew upon him in those sadder and later days of his life when he was deprived of the constant companionship of his comrades, which meant to him all in all. But even his most sorrowful moments sometimes yielded, on the sudden call of a remembered incident, to a quick recovery of the laughter that he loved, and the unpremeditated juxtaposition of feelings which he exhibited on such occasions was sometimes almost grotesque in their contrast.
I remember on the death of his wife he asked me if I would drive with him to the funeral, and I called for him at his house in Maida Vale, where we sat silently side by side in the little room adjoining the hall awaiting the arrival of the carriage. The tears were slowly coursing down his cheek, and I knew that many painful memories were thronging his brain, for his son and his daughter had already passed away, and by this final loss the last link with his domestic life was severed. And yet suddenly, as we were sitting there, a smile flitted across his face, and a laughing light came into those affectionate brown eyes that only a moment before had been filled with tears.
“I don’t know why it has come into my mind now, Joe,” he said; “I suppose it ought not to, but Imust tell you. I was having dinner once at Dumfries in a company of commercial travellers, and before the covers were removed the chairman rose and said, ‘Mr. Macfarlane, as you are nearest the window, perhaps you will ask God’s blessing on this feast.’”
This little incident may be taken as entirely typical of the man, typical of his absolute simplicity, of his total inability to range his feelings with the ordered decorum which conventional propriety demands. In another moment he was back again amid the more painful memories of his life, and within a few minutes we were on our way to the cemetery.
Numberless occasions of idle hours spent in Toole’s company I could recall, but they must all be shorn of the presence of the comedian himself, whose incomparable temperament as a humorist gave them point and zest. One day I remember, a day of an early spring, he had a fancy that we should journey towards Hampstead, and accordingly we drove till we reached the well-known tea-gardens of the Spaniard’s Inn on the road towards Highgate. The gardens were deserted, and a bleak wind was blowing through the empty bowers, inhabited on that morning only by a little boy who, with a small and, as it seemed to us, inadequate little broom, was dusting the seats in preparation for the influx of visitors that would come later in the season.
This small boy was of almost forbidding mien and decidedly surly in manner, but these external evidences of discouragement seemed only to fire Toole in his desire to make his better acquaintance. He complimented the urchin upon his dexterous use of the broom, a compliment to which the surly boyvouchsafed no audible reply. Toole, entirely undaunted, persisted in his overtures of friendship.
“That’s right, my lad,” he cried, “use your broom, and when you go to bed at night hang it up by the side of your bed.”
This injunction, so entirely unsolicited, seemed to rouse the boy’s ire, and his dormant powers of speech suddenly returning, he inquired of Toole, in tones that were almost indignant, “Why should I?”
“Because,” answered Toole, with a persuasive manner that seemed to convey a convincing argument, “if by chance you should wake in the night, there’s your little broom.”
The boy, to do him justice, seemed by no means appeased by this obvious explanation, and reverted again to his aimless occupation of dusting the vacant seats of the untenanted bowers of the tea-gardens. Whereupon Toole, still undefeated, attacked the citadel from another quarter.
“When is your birthday?” he inquired, and the boy, entirely taken off his guard, replied, “To-morrow!” and then, again entrenching himself safely behind his bastion of surly reserve, demanded in trenchant tones, “What’s that got to do with you?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing!” replied Toole, “only I thought I’d like to know if there was anything in particular you’d like for a birthday present.”
The boy, at first obdurately silent, at last yielded under pressure, and confessed that the dream of his life was to possess a bicycle.
“Why not?” said Toole.
“There’s nobody going to give me no bicycle,” replied the boy, although his mood was now obviously melting under the infectious influence of the comedian’s good-humour, and as we went towards the gate to get into our carriage the boy followed us, as though under some kind of spell induced by Toole’s suggestion, “that you never knew who might send you the present you wanted.”
It chanced that just at the entrance to the tea-gardens two bicycles were leaning against a hedge, and their two owners, flushed with exercise, were seated in jerseys beneath a tree quaffing a pot of ale.
“Why,” cried Toole, in tones of wondering amazement, as though he saw before him the fulfilment of his own prophecy, “there is your bicycle!”
The boy was bewitched. Without halt or pause he seized one of the vacant machines, and before interference was possible had mounted it and was riding down the road to Highgate, the owner, roused from his refreshment, starting in pursuit.
In a moment he returned, drawing his machine with one hand and holding the boy by the collar with the other.
“This is your fault,” he cried indignantly to Toole, “you encouraged him.”
“Well,” replied Toole, with the blandest of smiles, “you can’t blame the boy, he was only trying if it fitted him.”
The poor little fellow, now almost in tears, looked ruefully at us as we drove away. But there is a pretty ending to the story, for I happen to know that on the next day, which was his birthday, Toole sent him a little bicycle for his own.
During those earlier days when I first made his acquaintance and Irving’s, I was from time to time, and on different papers, employed as a dramatic critic, and I remember it was in that capacity that I had written a notice of Mr. Wills’ play ofCharles I., in which Irving had enforced and enlarged the impression created by his appearance inThe Bells. I think I had done sufficient justice to Irving’s impressive personation of the king, but my pronounced democratic inclinations were perhaps justly wounded by Mr. Wills’ almost farcical representation of the character of Cromwell. This opinion, openly declared in my criticism, deeply incensed Irving’s manager Mr. Bateman, and it was perhaps in order to find the opportunity of informing me of his disapproval that he invited me to a supper at the Westminster Club on the second or third night of the production.
My friend Thomas Purnell, to whom I have already referred, was present, and Irving and Toole were also of the company. When he thought the fitting moment had arrived, Mr. Bateman led the conversation to the point at issue, and lured on, I think, in a spirit of mischief by Purnell, he at last emphatically banged the table with his fist, and in the loudest of tones declared that he did not produce his plays at the Lyceum Theatre to please Mr. Comyns Carr. There was a moment’s awkward pause, which I did not feel quite able to break, but which was released by Purnell with a chuckle of delight and the happy retort:
“Well, dear boy, then you can’t be surprised if they don’t please him.”
All this while my own ambition to make an adventure as a writer for the stage had been steadily growing. My wife and I had made an experiment in a version ofFrou-frouentitledButterfly, which was produced by Miss Terry and Mr. Kelly during one of their provincial tours at Glasgow. But it was not until the year 1884 that I succeeded in getting a play presented at a London theatre. In the Christmas of 1883 Messrs. Arrowsmith of Bristol had published a short story entitledCalled Backwhich won instant attention from the public. Almost immediately after its publication I was dining at the Beefsteak Club, which at that time occupied rooms over Toole’s theatre opposite King William Street, and I was there recommended by one of my fellow-members to read it without delay.
As I walked home, for we had dined early, I asked at the small newsvendors’ shop near my house in Blandford Square, if they chanced to have a copy of the book. By a strange coincidence, one of their customers had ordered the little volume, published in paper covers at a shilling, and had afterwards found that he did not need it. I bought it and read it that night, and on the next day I wrote to its author—known to the public as Hugh Conway, but whose real name was Fred Fargus, member of a firm of auctioneers at Bristol—to inquire if he would permit me to prepare a version of it for the stage. We were wholly unknown to one another, yet he readily assented, and in the early part of the year 1884 I secured the production of the play at the Prince of Wales’ Theatre, then managed by Mr. Edgar Bruce. When thedate agreed upon for its production was drawing near Bruce had brought out, in association with Charles Hawtrey, a play calledThe Private Secretary; and, although on its first presentation this was not entirely successful, it grew so rapidly in public favour, due in great part, as I must think, to Mr. Beerbohm Tree’s admirable creation of the part of the curate, that there came a moment when Hawtrey very ardently desired that I should postpone the performance ofCalled Back.
He offered me as an inducement such a liberal share in the profits of his own piece as would, as the event proved, have yielded me something like a handsome fortune. But with the vanity of a young dramatic writer—in this instance supported by the fact that in Hugh Conway’s interests it was imperativeCalled Backshould not be delayed, lest our joint chance of success should be imperilled by piracy—I held fast by my agreement with the management, and further insisted as an integral part of that agreement that Mr. Beerbohm Tree, whose services Mr. Hawtrey desired to retain, should be engaged by Mr. Bruce for the part of Macari. Nor did I see cause to regret my decision; for, apart from the fact thatCalled Backitself proved an instant success which yielded to Conway and to myself, both in England, in America, and Australia, a substantial reward, its production was the means of forming two valued friendships, the one with Hugh Conway, only severed by his untimely death, the other with Beerbohm Tree, sustained and strengthened as the years have passed, and still surviving in a spirit of loyal comradeship on his side and on mine.
Hugh Conway’s was a lovable nature, and if his talent as displayed in later efforts has not been appreciated at its true value, the reason perhaps may be sought in the fact that the glamour of his first essay in fiction was sufficient to overshadow the work of his later years. But he had, as I think, a power in the suggestion of the supernatural altogether exceptional, and although his style affected no literary grace, he had the art of contriving and weaving a story so as to arrest and enchain the attention of the reader. From the time of our first association we became firm friends, and I believe my name was almost the last upon his lips when he met his untimely death from fever on the Riviera. At his wish I dramatised the next of his Christmas books, entitledDark Days, which was presented at the Haymarket Theatre in the following year, but it proved less acceptable to the public. He also published under my editorship, in theEnglish Illustrated Magazine, a serial story calledA Family Affair, and a few shorter tales, one of which, entitledPaul Vargas, possessed something of the weird mysticism of Edgar Allan Poe.
Previous to the publishing ofCalled Backhe had issued in one of the magazines an amusing little story illustrating the fortunes of two collectors of old china, which he allowed me to employ as the basis of a piece I presented at St. George’s Hall under the title ofThe United Pair. The German Reeds’ entertainment is now a thing of the past, but it occupied in those days a unique position as satisfying those whose religious scruples did not allow them to visit or to patronise regular theatricalentertainments. I remember as a child having been taken to the Gallery of Illustration in Regent Street, occupying, I fancy, the site now tenanted by the Raleigh Club, to see Miss Priscilla Horton, the originator of this special form of entertainment who afterwards, as Mrs. German Reed, gave a permanent name to the programme presented for so many years at St. George’s Hall.
At first the German Reeds had been associated with Mr. Parry, whose place, in my time, was occupied by my friend Corney Grain. Mr. and Mrs. Reed in those later days were both dead, and the purely dramatic part of the bill was under the direction of Alfred Reed their son, with whom I had many pleasant hours of association in the several pieces I wrote for him.The Cabinet Secretwas followed byThe Friar, a rather more ambitious experiment in verse, and that again was succeeded byThe Naturalist, the last of my contributions to the performances at St. George’s Hall.
It is hard in these days, when the earlier prejudices against the theatre are so nearly effaced, to realise the extraordinary vogue which this particular class of entertainment enjoyed. An author who wrote for the German Reeds had to tread warily, and the presence of a harmonium, as the sole support of the piano in the orchestra, was there constantly to remind him of the somewhat orthodox tone he was enjoined to observe.
Corney Grain, who in later days rarely appeared in the dramatic part of the programme, was a host in himself when he was seated at the piano, inimitable as he was in humorous perception of the lighterfoibles of the day. For years he was a constant figure at the Beefsteak Club, where in private life he betrayed the same quick glance into the little idiosyncrasies of individual character allied to a power of ridicule that never sought to wound, and a deeply seated geniality of nature that won him many friends, and never, as I think, a single enemy.
Of all the entertainers in this kind who have sought single-handed to amuse the public, partly in humorous characterisation and partly through musical accomplishment, he remains, as far as my impression goes, easily first in the class he represented.
A chapter of pleasant memories in the earlier days of my theatrical association is provided by a little club called “The Lambs,” to which I have already alluded. It had been founded in 1868, and I suppose it was about the year 1870 that I was admitted into the fold. Though not exclusively composed of actors, it was mainly concerned with interests that were theatrical, and it was there I first met Sir Squire Bancroft and Sir John Hare, in days when neither dreamed of the distinction of a title, and when both, indeed, were little past the threshold of their fame. There were no matinées then, and so we were enabled to meet for dinner on every Saturday during the autumn and winter at the pleasant hour of four o’clock.
When I first joined the society our meeting-place was at the old Gaiety Restaurant, but afterwards we moved to the Albemarle Hotel, then an old-fashioned hostelry at the corner of Piccadilly, which has long been supplanted by a more modern structure.They were the pleasantest gatherings that I can recall as being connected with that period of my youth. The rules of our Club prescribed just that little touch of ceremony and ritual by which grown men when they come together for social purposes prove themselves to be so nearly allied to children, and as a part of that ceremonial it was ordained that the “Shepherd” of the day, an office filled in rotation, had, at the summons of a graceful little silver bell, designed by one of our members, Fred Jameson, the right to call upon any one of those present whom he chose to select for a speech, which, with its reply, was all in the way of oratory that our rules permitted.
It was in this way that I first encountered that handsomest and gayest of young actors, H. J. Montague, whose charm exercised a widespread fascination upon the play-goers of his day, and who was further, and quite independently of such histrionic gifts as he could boast, a companion of the most sympathetic spirit. If not endowed with absolute wit, he could so infect the recital of the most ordinary adventures that he had encountered during the day with something of the rollicking sense of boyishness that was his own, as to keep his hearers in a mood of unflagging merriment and enjoyment.
But on one particular occasion, which I recall, he was bidding for a victory that lay not quite so easily within his reach. Chosen by the chairman as the spokesman of the day, he had selected me, perhaps because I was the youngest member of the Club, as the object of his raillery, and I remember now the look of amazement, almost of consternation,on his face when I replied to him in something of the same spirit which animated his own speech, and retorted with unsparing ridicule upon his own qualifications as an actor and as a member of our little society.
Joyous, indeed, were those weekly meetings of “The Lambs,” where we met in eager appreciation of that new birth in the drama inaugurated by Tom Robertson, and which was being presented, with so loyal a faith in their mission, by the company which Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft had gathered together in the little house in Tottenham Court Road. We were all enthusiasts, all animated by a firm faith in the future of the drama we loved, all supported by the thought that to-morrow would see the dawn of such a new birth of drama upon the stage as England had not witnessed for many a generation. And even looking back now it seems plain to me that the movement in which we were taking a part was not without its direct and important influence upon the new spirit that had crept into the theatre.
It is difficult now quite to realise the warmth of welcome we were then glad to bestow upon that little revolution which must be always associated with the Prince of Wales’s Theatre under the management of the Bancrofts. The return to realism which was there sought, and in a measure achieved, was exercised only in a narrow compass, and with an outlook that was restricted and limited. But it was designed to have a larger influence than seemed possible from such modest beginnings. It sought no triumphs which were not within the region of comedy, and that comedy itself did not strive forthe interpretation of more than the current sentiments of the time. But, by its earnest endeavour to bring the life as presented upon the stage into closer contact with the life of its time, it served to exercise an influence upon the art of the future in a wider and a deeper sense than was, perhaps, quite consciously entertained by those who were conducting its efforts.
The recollection of many pleasant hours spent at the Lambs Club recalls other social gatherings which have lightened my life as a man of letters. Of society, strictly so called, I have known but little. A few occasional excursions into the higher realms have come to me accidentally, and my experiences of such more formal gatherings were never of a kind to tempt me to strive with any earnest ambition for those more dignified joys which must, I presume, be highly prized by those who seek them.
The drift of modern life has, indeed, broken down many of the barriers of an earlier time, and the dividing line between Bohemia and Society, properly so called, is now often effaced by ambition on the one side or by curiosity on the other.
Here, however, I shall only speak of those more intimate gatherings where artists of various callings were wont to meet, and the first in my recollection are those associated with the pleasant Sunday evenings at the house of Dr. Westland Marston, whose simple hospitality drew many interesting folk to his table.
It was there I first met the beautiful Adelaide Neilson, whose picturesque and romantic career would vie in interest, if it could ever be recorded, with that of Lady Hamilton herself. Certainly her changing fortunes were no less sudden in their contrast, for, although she came of humble origin, she was at the time when I first knew her widely worshipped as a beauty and as an actress.
Dr. Westland Marston himself had, like Rossetti, though not in an equal degree, the power of inspiring and encouraging younger men, whom he loved to draw about him. While I was still at school I had already read his play ofThe Patrician’s Daughter, a play chiefly interesting from a literary point of view by reason of its endeavour to treat a purely modern theme through the medium of blank verse. Some of his shorter poems were also known to me, and as he was the first man of any rank in literature with whom I had become personally acquainted, I was glad of the opportunity which those Sunday evenings afforded me to know him better.
No man had ever a more real delight in literature or a clearer or more delicate perception of its finer qualities. I think it was Joseph Knight who first introduced me to him, and in the years when I was making my first efforts in journalism it was a constant delight to me to find that I was a welcome visitor at his house.
He had been impressed, as Knight told me, by a review I had written in theGlobeof the poems of Joachim Miller, and I remember the warm words of encouragement with which he greeted me on my first visit to his house.
It was there I met Mrs. Lynn-Linton, whose articles in theSaturday Reviewon “The Girl of the Period” were at the time attracting a considerable amount of attention. Afterwards I got to know her well, and learnt to discover in her earnest, enthusiastic nature qualities that struck much deeper than the superficial satire which she had exercised in this series of papers exploiting the foibles of her sex.
Another house where artists and men of letters were warmly welcomed was that of Dr. Schlesinger, who was for many years the valued English correspondent of theCologne Gazette. Dr. Max Schlesinger, in virtue of very considerable gifts both as a politician and as a man of letters, and even more perhaps by qualities of personal character that made him widely trusted, occupied an exceptional position in the world of journalism in London. His known discretion as a publicist won for him the confidence of the most eminent of our statesmen, but the associations of this kind which belonged to his life as a journalist, never led him to desert or to neglect that purely artistic environment to which by inclination and culture he naturally belonged.
Nothing could have been more simple, more entirely unostentatious than the hospitality offered on those pleasant weekly evenings in Dr. Schlesinger’s house. It was, I think, a valued rendezvous to all who considered themselves welcome, for it was Dr. Schlesinger’s privilege, partly due perhaps to the exceptional position he occupied, that he was able to make his house a delightful meeting-place for the leaders of thought in many departments, and for the most prominent artists of every nationality.
It was there I first met Mr. G. H. Boughton, then a young and struggling painter, who, if not American by birth, was at any rate American by long association, and who afterwards achieved in England a deservedly high place among his comrades. Mr. and Mrs. Boughton, before they built their house upon Campden Hill, had begun to be known as accepted hosts by a large body of artistic society, and in later days the big studio at Campden Hill became the scene of many joyous entertainments, which occasionally took the form of fancy dress. Mr. Boughton, whatever may be the final verdict on his own artistic achievement, was a man of fine taste and delicate perception, both in the region of art and in the wider field of literature. It was there I first met Robert Browning, a constant guest at the Boughtons’ dinners, which, with the larger parties they sometimes entertained, became for many years an accepted meeting-place for nearly all who were interested in art.
A little later, when the Grosvenor Gallery was established, the Sunday afternoon parties, so graciously presided over by Lady Lindsay, quickly established themselves as a social feature of the time. A part of the mission which Sir Coutts and Lady Lindsay had accepted was the establishment of a closer link between the professors of the plastic arts and the representatives of cultivated society; and certainly, while these afternoons endured, they served their purpose admirably well, and proved the means, to those who attended them, of formingmany new and valued friendships. I remember one of those pleasant assemblies being suddenly and very sadly interrupted by the arrival of Montague Corry, afterwards Lord Rowton, who was the bearer of the appalling announcement of the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke.
Of later hosts and hostesses who have especially distinguished themselves by the cultivation of the more artistic aspect of society it would be possible to speak with fuller appreciation, if it were not that they are still amongst us and still discharging those graceful duties of hospitality. Sir George and Lady Lewis, while they still occupied their beautiful cottage at Walton, made us all welcome, and the days I have spent there in company with Burne-Jones remain among the sweetest memories of that earlier time. Nor less delightful are the recollections which gather about those memorable Tuesday evenings which for many years have been enjoyed by the friends of Sir Lawrence and Lady Tadema.
The instinct of hospitality belongs to many kindly hosts; the genius of hospitality is rare, but it would be conceded, I think, by all—who for so many years have been welcomed, first to Townsend House overlooking Regent’s Park, and in later days to that larger and more spacious studio which stands in the Grove End Road—to Sir Lawrence and Lady Tadema. The last Tuesday evening we spent in Townsend House comes back vividly to me now. I think all of us who were there were a little moved at the thought that there should be even a temporary break in the continuity of these weekly gatherings; some of us, perhaps, were also a little afraid lest thenew order of things in that larger house towards which our hosts were flitting should be robbed of some of the intimacy we had so long enjoyed.
But such fears, if they existed, were quickly dispelled when we were once more welcomed to the new abode. The change belonged only to the building; our host and hostess have remained unalterable in the loyalty of their friendship.
It was at the house now occupied by Sir Alma Tadema that at one time I used to dine with the French painter, James Tissot, a man whose varied moods of changing ambition and alternating ideals leave him almost without a parallel among the painters of the time. Tissot was one of the first contributors to the exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, his talent at the time being almost entirely preoccupied by a modish type of modern feminine beauty.
In those earlier exhibitions he found such lighter essays of his hung in close juxtaposition with the widely different work of Burne-Jones, and dining with him at about this time I could see that his mind was deeply exercised by the impression the English painter had made upon him.
“Mon ami,” he confided to me, “je vois qu’il y a quelque chose à faire, là.”
And accordingly, before the next year’s exhibition had come round he had ventured his experiment in the region of what he thought to be ideal art. But the leap was too long for so brief a period of preparation, and I remember that his friend Heilbuth, who was present at the dinner of that second year, made sad havoc with the painter’s schemes byridiculing the little card upon which Tissot had set forth his symbolical intentions. He treated the written description of the pictures as though it were a menu of the feast that awaited us, crying out each course from the beginning: “Potage une dame avec un serpent, qui signifie——” But at this point the incensed Tissot snatched the paper from his hand, and amid a roar of laughter, in which perhaps the painter did not very heartily join, we went in to dinner.
But that sudden ambition, though it was not capable of immediate fulfilment, implied a deeper strain in Tissot’s nature which was destined to find expression at a later day. Shortly afterwards he left England, and it was many years before I saw him again, hard at work in his studio in Paris upon the completion of a series of designs in illustration of the Life of Christ. Those designs exhibited an extraordinary persistence in the interpretation of local truth, for he had made a long sojourn in the Holy Land in order to fit himself for the task, and they showed besides an occasional intensity of feeling that lay dormant and unsuspected in the man as I knew him first. What was the real kernel of such a nature it is hard to say. The man himself, although in those earlier days he displayed little but the evident ambition to make his art remunerative, nevertheless, by occasional glimpses, betrayed the elements of a deeper purpose underlying the life that was preoccupying him at the moment.
A strange figure, a strange individuality, yielding by turns to impulses the lightest and the most devout, but always, however he might be engaged,proving himself the possessor of an extraordinary industry and a remarkable talent!
I have already alluded to the suppers in the Beefsteak Room as among the notable social reunions of the time. But there is one of those Lyceum suppers a little more formal than the rest which I feel disposed to recall, because it gave evidence of quite an unsuspected power on the part of Henry Irving of suddenly replying as a speaker to an unexpected attack.
The occasion was the 100th performance of theMerchant of Venice, in 1879, and I think it was the first time that the stage of a great London theatre had been employed as the arena of a large and splendid entertainment. Since that time we have enjoyed such feasts under the hospitable auspices of Mr. Tree at His Majesty’s—once, as I recall, on the occasion of the 100th night ofJulius Cæsar, and again on a corresponding occasion to celebrate the successful run ofUlysses.
On the evening to which I now refer, the task of proposing Irving’s health was entrusted to Lord Houghton, who, it was thought, would hardly choose that particular occasion to exhibit the cynical temper he was known to possess. But Lord Houghton, as I afterwards found reason to know, was not disposed to be governed by conventional restrictions, and he devoted nearly the whole of his speech to a considered depreciation of Irving’s conception of Shylock, enlarging, in terms, that seemed to us who sat there, almost designedly bitter, upon what he considered the undeserved dignity that the actor had granted to the character.
It must have been that Irving was taken by surprise, and although his habit was always to speak from preparation, and often indeed to read what he had prepared, he proved himself, on this occasion, a master of good-humoured impromptu, twitting Lord Houghton, in a spirit of genial banter, with being a slave to the old-fashioned idea that Shylock was a comic villain, and promising on some future occasion to try and more amply satisfy his lordship’s ideal by representing Shylock as a Houndsditch Jew with three hats upon his head and a bag of lemons in his hands. The actor’s success, acknowledged by all who were present, was due, I think, mainly to the fact that, although taken off his guard by this unexpected provocation, there was not a trace of ill-humour in his reply.
There was one other occasion when Irving was the host at a small supper-party given at the Continental Hotel, when he showed an equal power of retaining his self-possession in circumstances the most trying and the most unexpected.
The honoured guest of the evening—entertained upon his return from a foreign campaign—was a brilliant and gifted journalist, now no more, and chief among those whom he had specially desired Irving to invite to meet him was a distinguished statesman still living, though by deliberate choice he no longer takes an active part in public affairs. The guest for whom the entertainment was given arrived late, and when he appeared it was evident to those of us who knew him that he had dined, not wisely, but too well. On a sudden, and in response to the most harmless raillery on the part of the statesman towhom I have referred, he rose and retorted with the most bitter and, if I may say so, the most vulgar abuse; and while we all sat appalled by the outrage he was committing, he turned and appealed to Irving to justify his extraordinary outburst. It was then that Irving’s tact showed itself. Quietly and slowly he replied, “All I have to say, my dear friend, is, that first upon the list of those whom you specially desired I should invite to meet you this evening, stood the name of Lord——.” And then, as though to prove to us that he too could exhibit an equal measure of self-possession, the man so wantonly attacked, without a word of resentment or rebuke, quietly filled his glass and invited us to drink just one toast to say how glad we were to see our old friend returned once more from his travels abroad.
As I have said in a previous chapter, H. J. Montague, at the time that I first became a theatre-goer, was the acceptedjeune premierof the time. He certainly had no rival among his own countrymen as the exponent of lovers’ parts in modern comedy.
But there was a foreigner who had preceded him, whose art had a wider compass, and whose powers as a creator of the heroes of romance knew no rivalry. In such achievements Charles Fechter had a conquering gift that laid all lady worshippers at his feet. It was only at a later time that I saw him in Shakespeare, and then only inHamlet. He was aged and had grown stout, and it is perhaps scarcely fair to speak of his abilities as a Shakespearian actor upon the imperfect evidence that was offered to me; but I thought even then that he treated the tragedy too exclusively from the point of view of a love story, reducing its higher imaginative message by too great a regard for Hamlet’s relations with Ophelia. But that very tendency which seemed to me a fault in his Hamlet was part of a gift that left him unapproachable in rôles that were purely romantic.
I saw him first inThe Duke’s Mottoat the Lyceum, and then inBel Demonio, and again inRuy Blas; and in all those performances, as I recall them, his fascination seemed irresistible. I can almost hear now the tones of his voice, defiant and triumphant, with that rich rising cadence which betrayed his foreign origin, as he came down the steps with Kate Terry in his arms in the former most tawdry of romantic plays. The impersonation of Ruy Blas cut deeper, as the play itself was more finely conceived. But, indeed, the effect he produced was hardly dependent upon the play. It rested rather upon something innately heroic in himself, something that left the spectator with a feeling of security from the first note struck by the actor, that the issue, however grave, and however perilous its intermediate passages, must leave him undefeated at the last. The last time I saw him was inMonte Christo, a drama with some strong scenes, but, on the whole, poorly constructed and unduly prolonged; and I remember, as I sat in the pit, that when midnight came and the end seemed still afar off, a cheery voice from the gallery cried out, “Good-night, Mr. Fechter, I shall be here again on Monday.”
The sort of play in which Fechter scored his greatest success has long fallen out of fashion, but I cannot help thinking that if the actor were here to-day who could boast gifts equal to his, a play fitted to form a vehicle for the exercise of his powers would be quickly forthcoming.
Fechter’s name naturally recalls other foreign actors and actresses who have visited our shoresduring the last thirty years. The greatest of them all, to my thinking, and I am not unmindful of the name of Salvini, was Madame Ristori. She had not, perhaps, the sudden power born of sudden impulse which Madame Bernhardt could boast, a power in which, I suppose, Madame Rachel was far superior to both. Indeed, I remember having a talk with Sir Frederick Leighton, who in his student days in Paris had known Rachel’s acting well, and he assured me that Rachel stood as far above Sarah Bernhardt as Sarah Bernhardt stood above all other actresses of her time.
But Ristori’s art, though it may have missed the occasional lightning flashes, was sustained throughout at a commandingly high level, sustained by a sense of style that gave continuous dignity and grace to all she did. Her Lucrezia Borgia rests with me as one of the most beautiful and at the same time most agonising performances I have ever seen upon the stage; and scarcely less memorable was her Marie Stuart.
It was during one of her later engagements in London that she conceived the ambition of playing the sleep-walking scene fromMacbethin the English language, and she asked me, with one or two other critics, to come to her house in order that we might correct any errors of pronunciation which her performance might betray. It was in a little drawing-room somewhere down in South Belgravia that we sat and listened to her as, in her ordinary every-day garb, she acted the scene; and I do not think there was one of us who was not so entirely absorbed in the beauty and power of the impersonation as not completely to forget the special mission upon which we had been summoned. It was only afterwards—when, recalling us to our task, she sat in our midst and quietly read the words over again—that we discovered she blundered in one particular, and in one particular only. When she came to the line, “Not all the perfumes of Arabia,” it seemed impossible for her tongue, “hung,” as Sala used to say of his own, “in a southern belfry,” not to give an absolutely equal emphasis to each separate syllable of the final word. There was no other fault to find, and when afterwards, encouraged by our praise, she gave the performance in the theatre, its effect was deeply impressive.
A little later, on my recommendation, she read, in English, Webster’s tragedy ofThe Duchess of Malfi, and at the time she was so keenly impressed with the beauty of the character, as set in its lurid frame, that she entertained the project of having a version of the play made for her in Italian.
As I walked away from her house that day with John Oxenford, he was recalling to me some of his earlier experiences as dramatic critic of theTimes. In those later days he had allowed himself to become little more than a good-natured chronicler of the narrative underlying each play as it was presented, and rarely elected to be critical or censorious, whether of the qualities of the dramatist and still less of the manner in which the actors acquitted themselves. In the discharge of this function, however, he had no equal. There was no one on the Press at that time who could, with such grace or in so narrow a compass, set forth the story of the plot ofthe drama under consideration. But some of us, who brought to our work the greater keenness of youth, were disposed to reproach him with the unvarying good-nature which governed his appreciation of the art of the time.
Some such feeling I must have expressed to him as we sauntered along, for he told me, by way of rejoinder, that he had very early learnt his lesson not to endeavour to intrude his own opinions into the columns of theTimes. Near the beginning of his career, he had indulged in some unfavourable comment upon the performance of the orchestra, which provoked an angry letter of remonstrance from the player of the trombone—a letter of remonstrance that in its turn called down a sharp rebuke upon the critic from the great editor, Mr. Delane.
“I wish it to be understood,” he curtly intimated to Oxenford, “that theTimeshas no desire to be embroiled in controversy with trombone players.”
And Oxenford assured me that he had since acted upon this clear note of warning, and had accordingly avoided as much as possible any kind of criticism that might invite a retort from the injured player, though he had on one occasion, as he confessed, indulged in an epigram that might, he feared, have injured his position. It was of some young actor, whose performance seemed to him more than usually incompetent, that he ventured the remark: “We are told that Mr. So-and-so is a promising performer. For our own part we can only say that we care not how often he promises so long as he never again performs.”
But this was an isolated instance in the powersof sarcasm which he undoubtedly possessed, and for the most part he continued to the end of his career in a spirit of unruffled urbanity.
The visit of the French players during the Franco-German War stirred London not a little, and undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence upon the younger representatives of dramatic art in England.
Delaunay and Got were in their separate ways perfect masters of that restrained and balanced art which is the outcome of the French system of training, exhibited in its perfect form in the French National Theatre. And the restraint and modesty of their methods strongly appealed to that younger school of actors in England who were already striving after a greater naturalness of interpretation. But their appeal was made for the most part in the region of comedy, and it was the advent of Salvini, with his larger and more passionate individuality, that gave a new impulse to the rendering of tragic character.
Salvini was beyond question a superb performer. His natural equipment for an actor, as exhibited in a voice of unexampled power and charm, was in itself more than sufficient to warrant the extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm which greeted his appearance in London. And yet, for all his undeniable power, his actual rendering of the character of Othello never seemed to me to be in perfect keeping with the spirit and intention of the author.
Overmastering in his strength and superb in his rendering of the more passionate passages of the play, he missed, as I felt at the time, and as I stillfeel, the tragic sublimity that marks the closing scenes of the drama.
I shall not easily forget my first vision of Sarah Bernhardt in Dumas’ play ofL’Étrangère, in which she was associated with Coquelin, Monnet, Sully, and Croizette. She seemed, even beside such accomplished players as these, to be a creature of a separate race, endowed with a force and intensity of feeling that made those around her appear to be moving in a lower world.
It was, however, only when she came to London that I got to know her personally, and after I had produced my play ofKing Arthurat the Lyceum Theatre, she was so strongly attracted by the subject that she had a French version of the drama prepared, wherein she intended herself to impersonate the character of Lancelot. But, like so many other projects which Madame Bernhardt has from time to time entertained, the favourable opportunity for such a performance passed by, and the idea was replaced by other and more pressing demands upon her brilliant career.
When she was in London she was a constant guest at Irving’s little suppers at the Lyceum, where she evinced the warmest admiration for the genius of Miss Ellen Terry. One evening, when Miss Terry was protesting that she was no longer young enough to undertake some rôle that Irving was pressing her to interpret, Sarah leant across the table and said, “My dearling, there are two peoples who shall never be old—you and me.” And, indeed, it may be allowed that in both cases the boast has won some warrant from nature. Theyouth of Miss Terry seems to be an indestructible gift. It is born again with each day of her existence, and as an essential quality of her nature has suffered no change and has known no deterioration from the early days when, after a brief period of absence, she returned to the stage as the heroine of Charles Reade’s drama,The Wandering Heir.
I think Sarah Bernhardt was always at her best when Miss Terry was one of her audience, and I recollect one occasion in particular, when, in company with Miss Terry, I witnessed a performance of theDame aux Cameliaswhich in sincerity and power far surpassed any of the many representations of the character which I had seen Madame Bernhardt previously deliver.
It was a particularly interesting evening, for it happened that only a few nights before Miss Terry and I had also together seen Madame Duse play the same part in the same theatre. Here again, I think, the Italian actress was finely inspired by the presence of her comrade, for she too had on that evening surpassed herself.
The contrast between the two performers was striking and complete, and would go far to prove how inexhaustible are the resources of the actor’s art, and how varied the influences of each separate personality, even when they are employed upon the same material.