XVIISIR HENRY IRVINGA Model of Courtesy and Kindness.—An Early Friend Surprised by the Nature of His Recognition.—His Tender Regard for Members of His Company.—Hamlet’s Ghost Forgets His Cue.—Quick to Aid the Needy.—Two Lucky Boys.—Irving as a Joker.—The Story He Never Told Me.—Generous Offer to a Brother Actor-manager.—Why He is Not Rich.
A Model of Courtesy and Kindness.—An Early Friend Surprised by the Nature of His Recognition.—His Tender Regard for Members of His Company.—Hamlet’s Ghost Forgets His Cue.—Quick to Aid the Needy.—Two Lucky Boys.—Irving as a Joker.—The Story He Never Told Me.—Generous Offer to a Brother Actor-manager.—Why He is Not Rich.
The American people at large know Henry Irving as a great actor, scores of Americans and hundreds of Englishmen of his own and related professions know him as one of the most friendly and great-hearted men alive. Many volumes could be written about his thoughtful kindnesses, and at least one of them could be filled with mention of his goodness to me, for, in my many visits to England, he never failed to “look me up” and show me every kindness in his power—and his power is great. If I were to go into details regarding myself, I should offend him, for, like any other genuine man, he does not like his left hand know what his right hand does, but it shouldn’t hurt for me to tell some open secrets about his kindness to others.
Lionel Brough often talks of the time when heand Irving, both of them young men, were members of a company in Manchester. In those days Irving was a dreamer of dreams and had a fondness for being his own only company, so his associates made him the butt of many jokes that did not seem to disturb his self-absorption. He had no intimates in the company, although he was of lovable nature. Near the theatre was an upholstery shop, the owner of which became acquainted with Irving, understood him and loved him, as did the family; they called the young actor “Our Henry,” always had room and a hearty welcome for him, and in many ways served as balm to his sensitive nature.
When Irving went to London he did not forget his Manchester friends—not even after he became a successful and very busy manager. He sent them frequent evidences of his regard, though he had no time to make visits. On coming into possession of the Lyceum Theatre he determined to reupholster every part of it. A large London firm desired the contract and made estimates but Mr. Irving sent to Manchester for his old friend, and, as the Irving company was leaving England for a long American tour, gave the upholsterercarte blanche.
On Irving’s return from America be inspected his theatre, was delighted with the renovation, and asked the upholsterer for the bill. Afterlooking it over he sent for the London firm that had offered plans and estimates, and asked them what they would have charged to do what had been done. They named a sum five times as large as the Manchester man had charged; Irving discovered later that his old friend had charged only for materials, the work being “thrown in” for old affection’s sake. But Irving disregarded the bill entirely and drew a check for twice the amount of the London firm’s estimate.
But it does not require memories of past kindnesses to open Mr. Irving’s purse, for he is almost as susceptible to the influence of old association. He has always maintained a far larger company than his productions demanded, and retained old members long after their services would have been dispensed with by a manager at all careful of his pennies. Many Americans have pleasant remembrances of old “Daddy” Howe, who died in Cincinnati some years ago while a member of the Irving company on tour. At a memorable dinner given Mr. Irving by his professional admirers in America, Mr. Howe arose and told of his offering to retire when the company was preparing to come to this country, and how his suggestion was received. Although he was eighty years old at the time, he had been a member of but three companies, one of which was Mr.Irving’s. He knew that the expenses of the American tour would be enormous, and that the small parts for which he was usually cast would be well played here for far less than his own salary, so his conscience compelled him to write Mr. Irving saying that he comprehended the situation and would either retire or accept less pay. As he received no reply, he repeated his suggestion in person to Mr. Irving.
“Dear me!—Ah! yes!—Well, I’ll let you know presently,” was the evasive answer from which Howe assumed that he would be retired, so it was with trembling hands that he opened a note from the manager the next day. He read:
“Of course I expect you to go to America, and I hope the increase of your salary will indicate my appreciation and good wishes.”
As Howe told this story his eyes filled and overflowed, but Irving, when all eyes were turned toward him, looked as if he did not see that there was anything in the incident to justify the old actor’s emotion or the applause of every one around the tables.
I am indebted to my friend, Mr. J. E. Dodson, who came over with Mrs. Kendall’s company, for these stories illustrating Mr. Irving’s manner on the stage in circumstances which would make almost any manager star drop into rage and profanity. Here is one of them:
“Old Tom Meade, beloved by all English players, and the best stock ghost any company ever had, was much given to reading in the dressing-room between his cues. “Hamlet” was on one night, and after his first appearance as the murdered king, Meade went to his room for the long “wait” before the closet scene. With his heels on the table, a black clay pipe in his mouth and silver spectacles astride his nose he was soon in the profoundest depths of a philosophical work. The call boy gave him notice of his cue.
“Uh-yes,” was the reply, but Meade went on reading. Several minutes later there was feverish excitement in the wings and messengers from the stage manager poured into Meade’s room; the lights had been lowered, the stage was enveloped in blue haze, but there was no ghost! Dropping his book, Meade hurried to the stage, but in his excitement he entered on the wrong side, and almost behind Hamlet. It was too late to go around to the other side, so Meade whispered huskily to Mr. Irving:
“Here, sir, here—just behind you!”
About this time the man who managed the calcium light succeeded in locating the dilatory ghost and in throwing the blue haze upon him, as Hamlet exclaimed:
“See where he goes e’en now, out at the portal!”
Poor Meade was in agony until he was able to speak to Mr. Irving.
“Gov’n’r,” he faltered, “reading in my dressing-room—heard call, but forgot. Rushed to wrong side of stage, sir. Never happened before—never will again, sir. And after all, it didn’t go so bad, sir.” For a moment Mr. Irving looked him through and through, after which he said icily:
“Yes, Tom—but I like it better the other way.”
One day Mr. Irving chanced to meet McIntyre, with whom he had played in the provinces in his own struggling days. The two men had not met in years, and Irving’s eyes—marvelous eyes they are, beamed with delight, as they always do when they see an old companion.
“Well, well, McIntyre!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”—and he led the way into Haxell’s, where they might have a quiet chat over cigars and brandy and soda.
“Nothing,” was the comprehensive reply.
“Have you settled on anything?”
McIntyre admitted that he was expecting to play in something at the Holborn. Before they parted Irving said: “You must come down and have seats in the house, so you can tell me what you think of us.” Next day he sent to the Holborn a most cordial letter containing tickets forthe two best seats in the lyceum and an urgent request for another chat. Merely as an afterthought was this postscript:
“Forgive me for handing you a ten-pound note as a loan at your convenience. You may need to get something new for the play.” McIntyre’s feelings may be imagined when I repeat his confession that at that moment he did not know where his next meal was coming from.
Mr. Irving is very fond of children and—as does not always follow in other men’s fondness of the same nature, he is very attentive to them. When he produced “Olivia,” the juvenile part was played by a nine year old boy who kept himself very clean and tidy, but his street clothes were so old that extreme poverty was evident. One night Mr. Irving asked:
“Where do you live, my lad?”
“Beyond Hammersmith, sir”—a London section some miles from the theatre.
“And how do you get home?”
“I walk, sir,” the boy replied, surprised by the inquiry.
“Yes, yes. But after this you must ride”—and Mr. Irving ordered that the boy should be supplied with bus fares thereafter. Later Mr. Irving noticed that the boy had a troubled look on his face. Asked if he didn’t enjoy riding, he confessed that he had been walking to save his’bus fares, for his mother was ill and his father out of work. An order was given that the boy’s salary should be raised; throughout the summer, though the company was not playing, the child continued to receive his salary, at Irving’s personal order.
Still more significant of his cherishing regard for children is a story of how he squandered time—more carefully guarded on the stage than anything else,—to make a boy happy. It occurred in a one-act piece—“Cramond Brig,” in which there is a supper-scene in a cottage, a steaming sheep’s head and an oat-cake are brought in and the cottar’s little son is supposed to do boyish justice to the feast. The little chap who played the part did not look as if he had eaten more than his allowance, which was not to be wondered at; stage feasts are not prepared by chefs, and the sheep’s head was indifferently cooked, the only stage demand being that it should send up a cloud of steam and look piping hot. One night, when the meat chanced to be well cooked, Mr. Irving noted that the boy entered into the spirit of the scene with extreme realism, so with a smile at the youngster’s energy he asked:
“Like it, me boy? Ah, yes; I thought so. Boys are always hungry.”
No sooner was that hungry boy out of hearingthan Mr. Irving ordered that the sheep’s head and oat-cake should in future be properly seasoned and carefully cooked; still more, he informed the players that the supper-scene was not to be hurried, but was to be governed by the boy’s appetite. And how that boy did enjoy the change!—though Mr. Irving seemed to get as much pleasure out of the feast as he.
“Old John,” Irving’s personal servant and dressing-room valet, used to go on a spree about once a year. With the fatality peculiar to such men, his weakness took possession of him on a night of “The Lyon’s Mail”—a play in which the leading character must make so rapid a change that quick and sober hands must assist him. Just as the change was impending poor John stole into the theatre and stood in the wings with comb, brush and other necessary articles hugged to his breast, though he was plainly incompetent to use them. He cut a ludicrous figure, though the time was not one for fun—not for the star. Mr. Irving grasped the situation; almost any other actor in similar circumstances would have grasped the valet also and shaken the life out of him. Irving merely said mildly—very mildly:
“John, you’re tired. Go home.”
Almost any man possessing a sense of humor has one and only one way of manifesting it, butin humor as on the stage Mr. Irving is protean. In the course of a long chat which he and Richard Mansfield had one night at the Garrick Club, Mansfield spoke of his noted Jekyll-and-Hyde part, which was very long yet called for but two notes of his voice—a severe physical strain, and he said:
“John, you’re tired.”
“John, you’re tired.”
“You know, Mr. Irving, it is longer than your great speech in Macbeth. I have been advised by our New York physicians not to do it.”
Irving looked thoughtful for a moment or two, which is a long period of silence for an eloquent man. Then he asked:
“My boy, whydoyou do it?”
Members of the Dramatists’ Club (New York) still recall with delight a story he once told them and which promised a brilliant climax that they could distinctly foresee. The end was quite as effective as they had imagined, yet it was entirely different and consisted of but two words.
Irving can turn even his peculiarities to account in story-telling. Like any other man of affairs he had sudden and long periods of absent-mindedness—which means that his mind is for the time being not only not absent but on the contrary is entirely present and working at the rate of an hour a minute. One day while we were driving together he turned to me and said:
“Marshall, I have a story you can add to your repertoire—a very quaint one.” Then he went into deep thought and we had gone fully a block before he spoke again; then he said:
“And you know——”
Then we went another block, then farther, but suddenly he asked:
“Now wasn’t that droll?” It certainly was, no matter what it was, if he said so, but he still owes me the story, for he had told it only to himself.
Such details of Irving’s thoughtfulness—almost fatherly solicitude, for other members of his profession, as have become generally known are buta small fraction of what might be told had not the beneficiaries been begged to hold their tongues. But here is one that was made public by my friend, E. S. Willard, an English actor already referred to and very popular in America. To realize its significance, one must imagine himself an American manager with an appreciative eye for Lyceum successes. At a dinner given at Delmonico’s by Willard to Irving, Mr. Willard said:
“When he heard of my first venture into the United States, Mr. Irving, without telling me of it, wrote a lot of friends over here that I was not a bad sort of chap, and they might look after me a bit. He gathered around me the night before I left London, a lot of his friends whom he knew I would like to meet. When I was about to leave the room he took me aside and said:
“‘If you find when you get to the other side that your plays don’t carry, or that the American people don’t take to them, just cable me one word. Here is my new play at the Lyceum, a beautiful success, and you shall have it—words, music and all, as soon as the steamer can get it to you.’”
“My boy, whydoyou do it?”
“My boy, whydoyou do it?”
It is not generally known that before being knighted Sir Henry Irving had twice refused a title, and accepted only after he had been convinced, by men prominent in other professions,that his “elevation,” as the English call it, would redound to the benefit of the profession at large. Personally the rank could have placed him no higher socially than he already was, for ever since he became known he has been surrounded by an aristocracy of brains. He will not and cannot be patronized, and, through the lasting respect which he has earned, he has done wonders for the dignity of the actors’ calling. His title has not changed his manner in any way. His great dinners on the stage of the Lyceum and his lunches at the Beefsteak Club are matters of history. His social engagements are as numerous as ever; often he does not retire until three or four o’clock in the morning, generally to arise in time to conduct a rehearsal at ten, sohis duties require an executive genius equal in degree to his artistic endowment.
It is strange to many people that a man of Mr. Irving’s business ability and personal popularity should be in comparatively poor circumstances instead of having acquired a fortune. He lives plainly, in hired rooms, not indulging in the luxury of a house of his own, with horses, carriages, etc. He spends money freely for books, and professionally for anything that may enhance the effect of his art and that of his theatre. But the few incidents cited above, are illustrations of the manner in which thousands of pounds have leaked from his pockets and show that it is bigness of heart that keeps Henry Irving from being a rich man.