MEN OF THE THEATRE
My association with the theatre began somewhat disastrously. It was my
father’s kindly thought, while we were still children, to afford us an
annual visit to the pantomime, a visit that was accomplished for our
large family by means of two hired flies, which transported us from our
house at Barnes to the chosen place of amusement.
But my particular enjoyment of this long-desired entertainment was
mitigated by circumstances both moral and physical. We had at that time
a nurse who, though by nature endowed with most affectionate impulses,
strongly disapproved of all dramatic entertainment, and who, for some
weeks before this annually projected tampering with the forces of evil,
tormented my spirit by a somewhat vivid picture of the eternal perils
which I was destined to encounter.
On the first of these theatre parties that I can recollect, when she was
coerced by my mother to form one of the party, in order that her
numerous flock should have proper protection, her original antipathy to
all things theatrical was strongly enforced and confirmed from the fact
that, in the first piece which preceded the pantomime, one of the
actors, shipwrecked upon a desert shore, gave utterance to a sentiment
which to her mind seemed profoundly impious--that “what man could do he
had done, and that God must do the rest.” As she explained to me the
next evening, when I lay tucked up in bed, the mere mention of God
within the four walls of a theatre was an act of profanity altogether
unpardonable, and from that time forward she would never consent to take
any part in these annual orgies.
But her manifest disapproval, as the recurring season of Christmas
approached, set my spirit in terrible debate between the pleasure I
longed for and the sin I knew I was about to commit. That internal
struggle, fierce as it seemed to me at the time, must, I suppose, have
been conducted with insufficient force on her side, for the issue left
me always eager and ready for the adventure of sin. Indeed, so eager was
our anticipation of the treat in store for us, that for many days
beforehand we could think of nothing else; and so great our excitement
as the appointed day approached, that the long-looked-for pleasure
nearly always ended in disaster. Excitement in our family always
revealed itself in an overmastering tendency to sickness, and from the
age of five till the age of ten my vision of the splendours of the
pantomime was intermittent, such glimpses of its glory as I derived
being for the most part only obtained through the small lunette at the
back of the dress-circle, the remainder of the evening being nearly
always passed in a state of utter prostration in the ladies’ cloak-room.
I neither claim nor profess any isolated distinction in this recurring
malady, it was the abiding characteristic of our family; and I have
often since, looking back on those days, reflected with admiration upon
the dauntless courage of my father and mother to whom these occasions,
repeated again and again, in spite of all example, must have been
fraught with nothing short of misery.
But to me personally there was this added penalty, that when I returned
from each such woful debauch, like a stricken soldier from the field, I
was compelled to endure without defence the reproachful glance of my
nurse’s eye, which told me as clearly as though it were written upon the
wall that I had but earned the appointed wages of sin. This nurse of
mine was in many ways a remarkable character. Linked with a nature
surely the most loving and affectionate that a child could desire, were
the sternest principles of religion and morality ever implanted in the
human breast--principles associated with so slender a store of
intellectual endowment that even to my childish mind their vehement
announcement was sometimes grotesque.
One of her most deeply rooted convictions was that the principle of life
insurance was a direct defiance of the laws of God: a proposition which
she sought to establish by a terrible tale of a butcher of Lewes, who,
having flouted Providence by affecting an insurance upon his life,
within half an hour after the conclusion of this prudent operation fell
down dead as he descended the steps of the market-hall.
Her intellectual equipment was perhaps no scantier than that of many
other women, but the fervour with which she employed it in the service
of her religious principles might have made her a desolating influence
upon the life of a child, if her loving and kindly nature had not
constantly given the lie to the rigid creed she innocently believed was
guiding her conduct through life.
It is undeniable, however, that such influences first exercised in
childhood are long remembered, and it was many a day before I could
quite free myself from the thought that the study of dramatic art was
not in some degree associated with a sinful life. It is difficult to say
whether this hovering sense of wrong-doing is not in its nature an added
incentive to enjoyment. Certain it is that the pleasures of the
play-house became a factor of increasing influence in my life. There was
an old laundry attached to our house at Barnes which seemed to us
singularly unfitted for its destined purpose, but which might, as we
thought, be easily adapted as an arena for the performance of stage
plays, and here, urged on by a wicked cousin who has since, as a fitting
penalty for his youthful delinquencies, become a clergyman, I began my
career as an amateur actor. We had at that time a distrust of all
feminine help, and chose for our essays in histrionic art only those
plays in Lacy’s list wherein the plot might be expounded by the
exclusive support of male performers.
It chanced, while I was at Bruce Castle School, I had for one of my
comrades poor Dick Bateman, son of Richard Bateman, who had about that
time, or soon after, become Irving’s manager at the Lyceum. Together we
became editors of a school magazine, and it was through him afterwards
that I won my first introduction to the theatre.
He was remarkable as a schoolboy for a prodigious and extraordinary
memory. I have spoken, in the earlier pages of this book, of the memory
of Churton Collins, but in Dick Bateman’s case the faculty was
differently exercised. It seemed in him to be purely mechanical, and we
used to delight, as schoolboys, to set him the task, in which he rarely
failed, of reading over a page of any author and then requiring of him
that he should repeat it word for word. That special kind of memory
which appeared to be detached from any personal interest in the matter
recalled, it has not been my chance to see equalled in any other man I
have known.
I have spoken of him as “poor” Dick Bateman because he met an early and
tragic fate, for after a few years spent in London in occasional
employment under his father he was sent upon some business adventure to
the East, and was drowned in a shipwreck which occurred off the coast of
Japan. But in our schooldays, and in the years immediately succeeding
our schooldays, we were close comrades, and it was through him that I
won my first knowledge of Irving, who had already appeared in several
plays in which I had seen him, but who had then been recently engaged by
Mr. Bateman as a leading actor to support his daughter, Isabella
Bateman, in whose interests he had undertaken the management of the
Lyceum Theatre. I had seen Irving before that time when he had played
Bob Gassett in _Dearer than Life_ at the Queen’s Theatre, and I had seen
him again in _Uncle Dick’s Darling_ at the Gaiety, when he had appeared
in company with Toole.
It was of the latter performance that Toole afterwards told me Charles
Dickens had said, when he saw it, that he thought it admirable in the
promise it gave of the young actor’s ability; though he had added: “I
fancy that both he and the author have cast an eye over my character of
Mr. Dombey--eh, Toole?” And to any one who saw the performance there
could have been no doubt as to the justice of Dickens’s suggestion. It
was at a little later date that Irving achieved his first great success
with the public in the character of Digby Grant in Mr. Albery’s play of
_The Two Roses_, and it was after that again that he became permanently
engaged to Mr. Bateman.
But Mr. Bateman’s endeavour to force his younger daughter Isabella upon
the acceptance of the public as a leading actress was not successful.
The play of _Fanchette_, with which he opened his management, was a
failure, and the part of the youthful hero, for which Irving was cast,
was entirely unsuited to his special abilities. Other adventures
followed, and they only had the effect of somewhat lowering the mark
Irving had made in _The Two Roses_, and there came a time in the
steadily waning fortunes of the theatre when it seemed that Mr.
Bateman’s management was destined to come to an inglorious end. It was
at that time that Irving, who had had for some little while in his
possession Leopold Lewis’s dramatised version of Erckmann-Chatrian’s
_Polish Jew_, persuaded Mr. Bateman to allow him to put it on the stage
of the Lyceum.
Irving has more than once told me the story himself, of how he and
Bateman paced up and down the Adelphi terrace at midnight debating the
possibilities of its success. Bateman, as he frankly avowed to the
actor, had no faith in the popular appeal of the play, and it was, I
suppose, only because he found himself at the end of his tether that he
somewhat reluctantly consented to permit Irving to make the experiment.
How hardly pressed the enterprising manager must have been at the time
was proved by the fact that one evening, when I was walking with him
down the Haymarket, he pointed to a corner public-house and said to me,
“The owner of that house once held an umbrella over me in the rain when
I most needed it, and I shall never forget it.”
Nor shall I ever forget the extraordinary impression made upon my own
imagination by my first sight of Irving in his performance of _The
Bells_. I have often recalled in recollection the sentence penned by
Dutton Cook, who was then the dramatic critic of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, wherein he said, “Acting at once so intelligent and so intense
has not been seen upon the stage for years”; nor do I think any one who
witnessed that performance, as it was rendered by Irving in the
plenitude of his powers, would be disposed to question the verdict of
the critic. To a youth I know it came as an astounding revelation--a
revelation charged with such extraordinary concentration of personal
feeling that the first vision of it as I recall it now seemed to have
almost transgressed the limits of art, so poignant, even to the verge of
pain, was the actor’s relentless portraiture of crime and remorse.
It was in Dick Bateman’s company that I first witnessed Irving’s
performance of _The Bells_, and it was through Mr. Bateman’s
introduction that I first learned to know the actor himself.
In order to realise the kind and the measure of effect which Irving’s
intense individuality exercised over the public of that date, it is
necessary to recall, if only for a moment, the condition of the stage at
the time. Phelps’s career, in which he had so loyally and so honourably
sustained the great tradition he had received from Macready, had
practically, for all its influence upon the art, come to an end. He was
still to be seen, as I saw him, in occasional engagements at Drury Lane,
and later under the management of John Hollingshead at the Gaiety, and
it was still possible to appreciate the great and sterling qualities of
high training and accomplishment that he brought to the service of the
theatre. But the magic which could win the attention of a new generation
was no longer there. Its influence, perhaps, had been partly destroyed
by the advent of Fechter’s more romantic method, which, even in his
rendering of the classic drama, granted to his performance something of
the charm and allurement of the conquering hero of a fairy story. And on
the other side of the picture there was gradually arising a new school,
though it seemed to be at the time exercised in only the tiniest arena,
wherein a determined effort was being made to bring life as it was
presented on the stage into closer alliance with the accepted realities
of contemporary manners.
A revolution in little had been started in the theatre in Tottenham
Court Road--a revolution due in the first instance to the talent of
Robertson, which was destined to exercise a lasting influence over the
theatre in England. Robertson’s new outlook, ably supported as it was by
Marie Bancroft and her husband, who found and captured an ally of added
strength in the person of John Hare, had the effect, for a while at
least, of throwing classical drama into discredit, and it was therefore
a matter of supreme difficulty for an actor equipped as Irving was,
whose vision struck deeper and whose ambition took a wider range, to
find a way to draw back the wandering attention of the public to the
more passionate drama which for the time had fallen out of fashion. It
was left to him almost unaided to forge a convention of his own, and it
is perhaps the highest tribute to his innate gift as an actor that,
although endowed by nature with few of the graces an actor might desire
to claim, he was enabled from this first adventure in _The Bells_ to win
little by little, and with every step in his career fiercely disputed, a
commanding position among the professors of his art.
I think at the first nobody was more surprised than Mr. Bateman at the
success achieved by Irving’s experiment. In those days the favourite
haunt of actors was the old Albion Tavern in Drury Lane. Clubs were
comparatively few, and fewer still the actors who belonged to them. The
licensing laws imposing the early closure upon the London taverns had
not yet been passed, and it was the habit of those who were interested
in the theatre to gather in the old-fashioned boxes of the Albion, and
to remain in eager discussion over the things of the drama till the
small hours of the morning. It was on one evening during the first
rendering of _The Bells_ that I found myself seated there in company
with a few genial spirits including Henry Montague, Toole, and Tom
Thorne, when we noticed that Irving’s manager, Mr. Bateman, had entered
and was gazing round the room as though in search of some one he had
appointed to meet. It occurred at once to the mischievous spirit of
Toole to turn the occasion to account. In a whispered sentence he made
the rest of us co-conspirators in the little drama he had suddenly
devised, and as Mr. Bateman, still scanning the visitors assembled,
advanced from box to box, he and Montague, in tones designedly pitched
so that all might hear, began an animated discussion as to Irving’s
rightful claims to a larger salary than he was at that time receiving. I
believe, in fact, that Irving’s remuneration was something like £15 a
week, which represented a substantial advance upon the payment he had
received during his engagement for _The Two Roses_ at the Vaudeville
Theatre; but Montague and Toole vied with one another like competing
bidders at an auction in loud proclaim of his larger worth.
“£15 a week!” said Toole. “Why, he’s worth £20 at any rate!”
“£20!” retorted Montague. “Nonsense! He’s worth £30 if he’s worth a
penny!”
And then Thorne, topping Montague, said he would be perfectly willing to
give him £40 if he would return to the Vaudeville; and as the voices
grew louder in the increasing estimate of Irving’s value, Bateman,
attracted by the discussion, drew nearer and nearer to the box in which
we sat, until at last, leaning with his elbows upon the mahogany
partition, he leant forward with lowering brows no longer able to
contain the indignation which these comments had provoked. And then at
last Toole, always incorrigible in humorous mischief, topped all
previous bidders by the emphatic announcement that Henry Irving was
worth £50 a week if he was worth a shilling, to which Bateman, now
incensed beyond measure, retorted, “Yes, and you are the scoundrels who
would put him up to asking it.”
Another anecdote, at that time related to me by Irving himself, also
belongs to those old days of the Albion. Seated one evening at supper
after the play he found himself opposite to a little old gentleman, who
was unable to conceal his remembered enjoyment of the performance he had
just witnessed at the theatre. Irving, encouraged by his manifest
geniality, inquired where he had been, to which the stranger replied
that he had come from the Vaudeville, where he had seen the most
delightful play, _The Two Roses_, wherein, of course, at the time Irving
was acting. Nothing could exceed the old gentleman’s enthusiasm for the
performers, as he recalled them one after another. Montague was superb!
Thorne was excellent! and so on and so on in a liberal catalogue of the
several performers, his appreciation rising with each added name.
Irving, at last a little nettled, as he confessed to me, at the
exclusion of all reference to himself, ventured to inquire of his
neighbour whether there was not in the play a character called Digby
Grant.
“Ah yes! Ah yes!” assented the old gentleman, reflectively.
“Well, now,” said Irving, “what did you think of that performance?”
“Very good,” returned the old gentleman--“very good,” in tones which
seemed to imply that he was only half-willingly conceding a point upon
which he was not wholly convinced. “Ah yes, yes,” he added; “very good,
but, by heavens,” he continued, “what a part Johnny Hare would have made
of it!”
The progress made by Irving in those earlier times of his histrionic
career was fiercely disputed at each step of the way. It could hardly
have been foreseen then that he would ultimately win the larger fame
that was accorded to him, and it must be conceded to those critics who
blocked his path that there was much in the individuality of the man
himself to account for the slow growth of his appeal to the public. I
have often heard him say himself in later days that his success was
achieved in spite of many natural disabilities. His figure at that time
was accounted ungainly, his gestures were often reckoned grotesque, and
the quality of his voice was such as naturally to repel those whom his
individuality did not powerfully attract. But it was in virtue of that
individuality, and by reason of those very attributes that barred his
progress on the threshold of his career, that he at last reached the
goal.
The peculiarities of his personality could not by their nature, on their
first appeal, be widely accepted as forming a normal vehicle for the
expression of poetic drama. For many years his career presented
[Illustration: HENRY IRVING IN THE CHARACTER OF BECKET
From a photograph by H. 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 wholly successful 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 of sounding 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 of _Frou-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 of
_Frou-frou_ as it is recalled to me by that superb exhibition of passion
in her encounter with Louise.
It was not Irving’s performance of _The Bells_ or 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 played
_Hamlet_ that he convinced me of the possession of deeper imaginative
powers.
_À propos_ of _Hamlet_, 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 performance of 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. _Hamlet_ was 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 only _Hamlet_, 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 him to 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
tremble as 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 as _Faust_ was 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
found that 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 idea of 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’s _Monna Lisa_ in 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 where you 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 an opinion, 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, was explaining 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 I must 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 boy vouchsafed 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 of _Charles I._, in which Irving had
enforced and enlarged the impression created by his appearance in _The
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 of _Frou-frou_ entitled _Butterfly_, 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 entitled _Called Back_
which 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 the date agreed
upon for its production was drawing near Bruce had brought out, in
association with Charles Hawtrey, a play called _The 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 of _Called 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 imperative _Called Back_ should 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 that _Called Back_ itself 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,
entitled _Dark 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 the _English Illustrated Magazine_, a
serial story called _A Family Affair_, and a few shorter tales, one of
which, entitled _Paul Vargas_, possessed something of the weird
mysticism of Edgar Allan Poe.
Previous to the publishing of _Called Back_ he 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 of _The 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
theatrical entertainments. 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 Secret_ was followed by _The Friar_, a rather more
ambitious experiment in verse, and that again was succeeded by _The
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 lighter foibles 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 for the 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.