But Burne-Jones by this time had become one of our most ardent
admirers, and was prejudiced in my favour because my acting appealed
to his _eye_. Still the drama is for the eye as well as for the ear
and the mind.
"_The Dead Heart_"
Very early I learned that one had best be ambitious merely to please
oneself in one's work a little--quietly I coupled with this the
reflection that one "gets nothing for nothing, and damned little for
sixpence!"
Here I was in the very noonday of my life, fresh from Lady Macbeth and
still young enough to play Rosalind, suddenly called upon to play a
rather uninteresting mother in "The Dead Heart." However, my son Teddy
made his first appearance in it, and had such a big success that I
soon forgot that for me the play was rather "small beer."
It had been done before, of course, by Benjamin Webster and George
Vining. Henry engaged Bancroft for the Abbe, a part of quite as much
importance as his own. It was only a melodrama, but Henry could always
invest a melodrama with life, beauty, interest, mystery, by his
methods of production.
"I'm full of French Revolution," he wrote to me when he was
preparing the play for rehearsal, "and could pass an examination.
In our play at the taking of the Bastille, we must have a starving
crowd--hungry, eager, cadaverous faces. If that can be well
carried out, the effect will be very terrible, and the contrast to
the other crowd (the red and fat crowd--the blood-gorged ones who
look as if they'd been all drinking wine--_red_ wine, as Dickens
says) would be striking.... It's tiresome stuff to read, because
it depends so much on situations. I have been touching the book
up, though, and improved it here and there, I think.
"A letter this morning from the illustrious ---- offering me his
prompt book to look at.... I think I shall borrow the treasure,
why not? Of course he will say that he has produced the play and
all that sort of thing, but what does that matter, if one can
only get one hint out of it?
"The longer we live, the more we see that if we only do our own
work thoroughly well, we can be independent of everything else or
anything that may be said....
"I see in Landry a great deal of Manette--that same vacant gaze
into years gone by when he crouched in his dungeon nursing his
wrongs....
"I shall send you another book soon to put any of your alterations
and additions in--I've added a lot of little things with a few
lines for you--very good, I think, though I say it as shouldn't--I
know you'll laugh! They are perhaps not startlingly original, but
better than the original, anyhow! Here they are--last act!
"'Ah, Robert, pity me. By the recollections of our youth, I
implore you to save my boy! (_Now_ for 'em!)
"'If my voice recalls a tone that ever fell sweetly upon your ear,
have pity on me! If the past is not a blank, if you once loved,
have pity on me!' (Bravo!)
"Now I call that very good, and if the 'If' and the 'pity's' don't
bring down the house, well it's a pity! I pity the pittites.
"... I've just been copying out my part in an account book--a
little more handy to put into one's pocket. It's really very
short, but difficult to act, though, and so is yours. I like this
'piling up' sort of acting, and I am sure you will, when you play
the part. It's restful. 'The Bells' is that sort of thing."
The crafty old Henry! All this was to put me in conceit with my part!
[Illustration: "ELLEN TERRY AS QUEEN KATHERINE IN HENRY VIII"
THE PART PLAYED BY HER AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON IN 1902
_Copyrighted by Window and Grove_]
_A Letter From Burne-Jones_
Many people put me in conceit with my son, including dear Burne-Jones,
with his splendid gift of impulsive enthusiasm:
"The Grange, West Kensington, W.
"Sunday.
"Most dear Lady:
"I thought all went wonderfully last night--and no sign could I
see of hitch or difficulty--and as for your boy, he looked a
lovely little gentleman--and in his cups was perfect, not
overdoing by the least touch a part always perilously easy to
overdo. I too had the impertinence to be a bit nervous for you
about him--but not when he appeared--so altogether I was quite
happy.
"... Irving was very noble--I thought I had never seen his face
so beatified before--no, that isn't the word, and to hunt for
the right one would be so like judicious criticism that I
won't--exalted and splendid it was--and you were you--YOU--and so
all was well. I rather wanted more shouting and distant roar in
the Bastille scene--since the walls fell, like Jericho, by noise,
a good, dreadful growl always going on would have helped, I
thought--and that was the only point where I missed anything.
"And I was very glad you got your boy back again and that Mr.
Irving was ready to have his head cut off for you, so it had what
I call a good ending, and I am in bright spirits to-day, and
ever,
"Your real friend,
"E. B. J.
"I would come and growl gladly."
There were terrible strikes all over England when we were playing "The
Dead Heart." I could not help sympathising with the strikers; yet
reading all about the French Revolution as I did then, I can't
understand how the French nation can be proud of it when one
remembers how they butchered their own great men, the leaders of
the movement--Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, and the
others. My man is Camille Desmoulins. I just love him.
"_Ravenswood_"
Plays adapted from novels are always unsatisfactory. A whole story
cannot be conveyed in three hours, and every reader of the story looks
for something not in the play. Wills took from "The Vicar of
Wakefield" an episode and did it right well, but there was no
_episode_ in "The Bride of Lammermoor" for Merivale to take. He tried
to traverse the whole ground and failed. But he gave me some lovely
things to do in Lucy Ashton. I had to lose my poor wits, as in
Ophelia, in the last act, and with hardly a word to say I was able to
make an effect. The love scene at the well I did nicely, too.
Seymour Lucas designed splendid dresses for this play. My "Ravenswood"
riding dress set a fashion in ladies' coats for quite a long time.
Mine was copied by Mr. Lucas from a leather coat of Lord Mohun. He is
said to have had it on when he was killed. At any rate there was a
large stab in the back of the coat, and a blood-stain.
"_Nance Oldfield_"
This was my first speculation in play-buying! I saw it acted and
thought I could do something with it. Henry would not buy it, so I
did. He let me do it first in front of a revival of "The Corsican
Brothers," in 1891. It was a great success, although my son and I did
not know a word on the first night and had our parts written out and
pinned all over the furniture! Dear old Mr. Howe wrote to me that
Teddy's performance was "more than creditable; it was exceedingly good
and full of character, and with your own charming performance, the
piece was a great success." Since 1891 I must have played "Nance
Oldfield" hundreds of times, but I never had an Alexander Oldworthy so
good as my own son, although such talented young actors as Martin
Harvey, Laurence Irving, and, more recently, Harcourt Williams, have
all played it with me.
"_Henry VIII._"
Henry's pride as Cardinal Wolsey seemed to eat him. How wonderful he
looked (though not fat and self-indulgent like the pictures of the
real Wolsey) in his flame-coloured robes! He had the silk dyed
specially by the dyers to the Cardinals' College in Rome. Seymour
Lucas designed the clothes. It was a magnificent production, but not
very interesting to me. I played Katherine much better ten years later
at Stratford-on-Avon at the Shakespeare Memorial Festival. I was
stronger then, and more mature. This letter from Burne-Jones about
"Henry VIII." and Henry Irving is delightful. I will not keep it to
myself any longer:
"My dear Lady,
"We went last night to the play (at my Theatre) to see 'Henry
VIII.' Margaret and Mackail and I. It was delicious to go out
again and see mankind, after such evil days. How kind they were to
me no words can say--I went in at a private door and then into a
cosy box and back the same way, swiftly, and am marvellously the
better for the adventure. No you, alas!
"I have written to Mr. Irving just to thank him for his great
kindness in making the path of pleasure so easy, for I go
tremblingly at present. But I could not say to him what I thought
of the Cardinal--a sort of shame keeps one from saying to an
artist what one thinks of his work--but to you I can say how nobly
he warmed up the story of the old religion to my exacting mind in
that impersonation. I shall think always of dying monarchy in his
Charles--and always of dying hierarchy in his Wolsey. How
Protestant and dull all grew when that noble type had gone!
"I can't go to Church till red cardinals come back (and may they
be of exactly that red), nor to Court till trumpets and banners
come back--nor to evening parties till the dances are like that
dance. What a lovely young Queen has been found. But there was no
you.... Perhaps it was as well. I couldn't have you slighted even
in a play, and put aside. When I go back to see you as I soon
will, it will be easier. Mr. Irving let me know you would not act;
and proposed that I should go later on--wasn't that like him? So I
sat with my children and was right happy, and as usual the streets
looked dirty and all the people muddy and black as we came away.
Please not to answer this stuff.
"Ever yours aff'ly,
"E. B. J.
"I wish that Cardinal could have been made Pope, and sat with his
foot on the Earl of Surrey's neck. Also I wish to be a Cardinal,
but then I sometimes want to be a pirate. We can't have all we
want.
"Your boy was very kind--I thought the race of young men who are
polite and attentive to old fading ones had passed away with
antique pageants--but it isn't so."
When the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire gave the famous fancy-dress
ball at Devonshire House, they attended it in the robes which had
appealed so strongly to Burne-Jones's imaginative eye. I was told by
one who was present at this ball that, as the Cardinal swept up the
staircase, his long train held magnificently over his arm, a sudden
wave of reality seemed to sweep upstairs with him, and reduce to the
pettiest make-believe all the aristocratic masquerade that surrounded
him.
I renewed my acquaintance with "Henry VIII" in 1902, when I played
Queen Katherine for Mr. Benson during the Shakespeare Memorial
performances in April. I was pretty miserable at the time--the
Lyceum reign was dying, and taking an unconscionably long time
about it, which made the position all the more difficult. Henry
Irving was reviving "Faust"--a wise step, as it had been his
biggest "money-maker"--and it was a question whether I could play
Margaret. There are some young parts that the actress can still
play when she is no longer young: Beatrice, Portia, and many others
come to mind. But I think that when the character is that of a young
girl, the betrayal of whose innocence is the main theme of the play,
no amount of skill on the part of the actress can make up for the loss
of youth.
Suggestions were thrown out to me (not by Henry Irving, but by others
concerned) that, although I was too old for Margaret, I might play
_Martha_! Well! well! I didn't quite see _that_. So I redeemed a
promise given in jest at the Lyceum to Frank Benson twenty years
earlier, and went off to Stratford-upon-Avon to play in "Henry VIII."
I played Katherine on Shakespeare's Birthday--such a lovely day,
bright and sunny and warm. The performance went finely--and I made a
little speech afterwards which was quite a success.
During these pleasant days at Stratford, I went about in between the
performances of "Henry VIII," which was, I think, given three times a
week for three weeks, seeing the lovely country and lovely friends who
live there. A visit to Broadway and to beautiful Madame de Navarro
(Mary Anderson), was particularly delightful. To see her looking so
handsome, robust, fresh, so happy in her beautiful home, gave me the
keenest pleasure. I also went to Stanways, the Elchos' home--a
fascinating place. Lady Elcho showed me all over it, and she was not
the least lovely thing in it.
In Stratford I was rebuked by the permanent inhabitants for being kind
to a little boy in professionally ragged clothing who made me, as he
has made hundreds of others, listen to a long made-up history of
Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice," "Julius
Caesar," and other things--the most hopeless mix! The inhabitants
assured me that the boy was a little rascal, who begged and extorted
money from visitors by worrying them with his recitation until they
paid him to leave them alone.
Long before I knew that the child was such a reprobate, I had given
him a pass to the gallery and a Temple Shakespeare! I derived such
pleasure from his version of the "Mercy" speech from the "Merchant of
Venice" that I still think he was ill-paid!
The quality of mercy is not strange
It droppeth as _the_ gentle rain from 'Eaven
Upon _the_ place beneath; it is twicet bless.
It blesseth in that gives and in that takes
It is in the mightiest--in the mightiest
It becomes the throned monuk better than its crownd.
It's an appribute to God inself
It is in the thorny 'earts of Kings
But not in the fit and dread of kings.
I asked the boy what he meant to be when he was a man. He answered
with decision: "A reciterer."