HARRY, THE ACTOR
“There comes a time in every man’s life when his own judgment is of
greater use to him than other people’s.”
—_When We Were Twenty-One._
“I have been lectured a good deal during my career.”
—_Fools of Nature._
No man in his time played more parts than Harry. To begin with, he
started very young, started off from the bosom of a family which had no
knowledge of the stage. So innocent were they of the life on which he
was embarking, that his mother, hearing that he had joined a company of
touring actors, asked, in all seriousness, “What time is the caravan
calling for you, my dear?”
He started his career with a salary of ten shillings a week, and played
anything and everything that was offered. He used to tell the story of
“how he played a wave”—lying underneath a very dusty floor cloth,
“billowing up and down”—and a nasty, stuffy business it must have been,
too! Imagine the horror of the modern young actor, touring the
provinces, if he were asked to lie on the stage and give an
impersonation of that element which Britain is popularly reputed to
rule!
One of his first real parts—and I doubt if it was even a speaking
part—was that of a waiter who had to carry on a basket of refreshments
for the guests at a picnic. Harry was determined to make the part “stand
out”. He took the script back to his rooms—rooms, did I say? Room, a
combined room, at probably eight shillings a week—and thought over it
very earnestly. Inspiration came to him—he would make the waiter a very
lame man with an elaborate limp; and at rehearsal next day he entered
limping. Mr. Fernandez, the producer, shouted from the stalls, “Here,
here, my boy, what _are_ you doing?”, and added very seriously, “never
fool with a part, take your work seriously. Take it from him, give it to
somebody else!” That was the result of Harry’s first attempt at
characterisation. You must remember that at this time he was about 15 or
16, very slight and boyish-looking, and he went round the provinces
playing heavy villains in _The Stranglers of Paris_, _The Corsican
Brothers_, _Uriah Heep_, _Oliver Twist_, etc. Think of a boy of that age
portraying “Bill Sykes”! However, he stuck to the provinces for some
time, like many another actor who won his spurs in London after a long
and perhaps rather dreary apprenticeship; though I cannot believe that
Harry ever found any acting dreary, he loved it too well.
When at last he came to London it was to appear in _The Panel Picture_,
in which he made an amazing success in the part of a boy who was shot on
the stage and had a big death scene; and then the round of playing old
men began. I have told how, when I first met him, he was playing the
part of a villain, and so padded as to be almost unrecognisable. When,
many years later, he went to George Alexander, it was to play “Cayley
Drummle”, the old man in _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and it took George
Alexander a long time to believe that Harry could make a success of a
part which was suited to his years. This, in spite of the fact that he
had already played the boy in _Sweet Nancy_, when Clement Scott (who
disliked his first play so heartily) lifted his hands to the skies and
“thanked Heaven for this perfect actor!” When George Alexander produced
_Much Ado_, I remember he sent for Harry and asked him tentatively if he
thought he could play “Claudio”. Harry was delighted at the prospect,
and I remember, too, his disappointment when he was finally cast for
“Verges”. Later came Henry Arthur Jones’s _Masqueraders_, when at last
his chance came; he played a young man, and won not only the heart of
George Alexander, but the heart of the public, by his performance.
I hesitate to use the word “genius”; but my excuse, if one is needed,
must be that others used it before in referring to Harry. In the old
days, when we all used to go holiday-making together, when Harry, Gerald
du Maurier, and Charles Hallard were almost inseparable companions, they
were known as “The Gent., The Genius, and The Young Greek God”—one of
those happy phrases, coined under sunny skies, which, under all the fun
that prompts them, have a sub-stratum of truth. The phrase has lived,
for only a year ago Gerald du Maurier wrote to me, saying, “And when we
meet, I will be the Young Greek God again, and we will talk of the
Genius—bless him!” So I use the word in connection with Harry as an
actor, and will only modify it by adding that he had one handicap—he was
too versatile. As a young man he could play old men, and play them well,
even brilliantly. As an older man he could still play young men, who
were indeed young, not creatures born of grease paint and wigs, whose
only attempt at being young came from affected movements and smart
clothes.
His character-studies were real people, not bundles of eccentricities,
with amazing and repulsive tricks; they were real old people, treated,
where it was demanded, with humour, but a humour which was from the
heart and spoke to the heart, and not only apparent to the eye of the
beholder. His young men were charming, virile, and obviously enjoying
life. He could play devout lovers, rakes (and what delightful rakes,
too, they were!), old men, and mad men, and play them all with more than
a touch of genius. There you had his handicap: from the very fact of the
excellence of all he did, he was never allowed to specialise. He never
became definitely associated with any special type of part. It never
became a case of “No one can play that except Harry Esmond”, for there
was probably a part in almost every play which Harry Esmond could have
played, and played with charm and distinction.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by Alfred Ellis, London, W._ To face p. 218
HARRY AS MAJOR BLENCOE
“The Tree of Knowledge”
]
Consider for a moment some of the parts which he played, and consider
the variety of them. There is “Little Billee”, a part which I find many
people remember best; “Kean”, the mad musician, in _Grierson’s Way_;
“D’Artagnan” in _The Three Musketeers_; “Sir Benjamin Backbite” in _The
School for Scandal_; “Touchstone” in _As You Like It_; old “Jacob
Ussher” in _Birds of a Feather_; and various characters in _Dear
Brutus_, _The Times_, _Lights Out_, _Chance_, _The Idol_. They were all
parts which were as different as could well be imagined, and every one
worthy of notice, and played with sympathy and great understanding.
When the Royal Performance of _Trilby_ was given, as far as possible it
was attempted to present the original cast. Harry was asked to play the
“young and tender Little Billee”. At first he refused, saying that he
was too old, but finally he was persuaded to appear. Phyllis Neilson
Terry was to play “Trilby”, and I remember hearing of her dismay when
she was told who was to be “Billee”. She remembered seeing Harry in the
part when she “was a little girl”! At the dress rehearsal her fears
vanished. She came up to me and told me what she had feared. “But now,”
she said, “well, just look at him; he’s straight from the nursery; my
husband says I’m baby-snatching.”
Swing the pendulum to the other side, and recall his “Jacob Ussher” in
his own play, _Birds of a Feather_—the old Jew, the modern Shylock, who
sees himself bereft of the only thing he loves in life, his daughter.
Ussher is no more ashamed of the way in which he has made his money than
Shylock was, but he, with all his pride of race, is very definitely
ashamed that his daughter should wish to marry such a poor “aristocratic
fish” as “Rupert Herringham”. How the part includes every note in the
scale of the emotions; how Ussher alternates between the over-indulgent
father and the martinet who rules his women exactly as his forefathers
did; how he bullies and cajoles; how he uses persuasion and force; how
he raves, rails, and finally weeps; and who, when Harry played him, wept
not as an Englishman, but as a Jew who sees, in the ruin of his
daughter, the destruction of the Temple and the Holy City by those who
“know not the Law and the Prophets”. After seeing the play, a Jew told
him that the only disappointment, the only thing which seemed “unreal”,
was to find Harry seated in his dressing-room “talking English and not
Hebrew”; and yet a critic said of this performance that “as far as
characterisation is concerned, Ussher might have been a Gentile”. Let
that critic see to it that he knows well the sons of Jacob, and then let
him recall the performance at the Globe Theatre, with Harry Esmond as
“one of them”.
I have told you how he came to play “D’Artagnan” in the _Musketeers_, in
the place of Lewis Waller, and I remember the doubts which were
expressed everywhere as to whether Harry was sufficiently robust and
virile to play the part of the Gascon soldier of fortune. How Harry,
realising that so far as personal appearance went he was as unlike the
traditional hero of Dumas’ romance as well could be imagined, set to
work to give such a reading that his slimness, his boyishness, his
delicate air of romance, might be changed from handicaps to assets.
Lewis Waller was probably more the man Dumas had in his mind; he was
outwardly the typical mercenary fire-eater with a love of adventure, and
a great-hearted courage behind it all; Harry Esmond was more like the
conventional “Athos”, but he made you feel that here was the “soldier in
spite of himself”; here was the son of Gascony who might so easily have
been made a courtier or even a priest, but for the love of adventure,
the romance, the high-spirited courage, which had driven him out to join
the King’s Musketeers at any cost. Speaking of this part reminds me that
during the run of the play Harry allowed his hair to grow, so that he
did not need to wear a full wig. He was riding down the King’s Road one
morning on his bicycle, when two small boys caught sight of him. “’Ere,
Bill,” shouted one, “’ere’s a poet.” The other gazed at Harry, and
returned with scorn, “Garn wiv yer, that ain’t a poet, that’s a bloomin’
b——dy _poem_.”
When Lewis Waller produced _Romeo and Juliet_, Harry was cast for
“Mercutio”, a part which called for all the gaiety, all the youth, all
the gallantry which he knew so well how to portray. I find that one
critic said of his performance that “it had that touch of mystery which
Mr. Esmond has given before, a touch of aloofness, indefinably appealing
and tragic”, which seems to me to sum up the performance admirably. I
find, too, another critic who says “he cannot interpret that
youthfulness which springs from the joy of living”—“the joy of living”,
which was an integral part of the man all his life!
Speaking of “Mercutio” brings me to another Shakespearean part which
Harry played—that of “Touchstone”. And here again he committed the crime
of playing “Touchstone” as he felt he should be played, not as custom,
convention, and tradition dictated. The first intimation that he was
outraging the feelings of these three old gods came at rehearsal, when
on the exit “bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage” the producer told him
“Here you exit, dancing. You know what I mean: ‘the light fantastic
toe’.” Harry did know, and he did not see why the exit demanded that
particular method. He asked “Why?” “Why?” repeated the producer, Mr. H.
H. Vernon; “why? Well, because it is always made like that.” Again Harry
asked “Yes, but why? what’s the reason?” “_Reason_,” repeated Mr.
Vernon, “I don’t know any _reason_; it’s _always done like that_.” “Give
me a reason,” Harry begged, “and if it’s a good one, I’ll think it
over”; but no reason was forthcoming, except the reiteration that “it
had always been done so, etc.” Now, to Harry, “Touchstone” was a
“jester”, not a “clown”, and he believed that when Shakespeare so
designated him it was used in the sense of “one who clowns or jests”; he
saw no reason to make “Touchstone” anything but a “clown” in name, for
he held that his words prove him to be the cleverest man in the play,
and that he is the forerunner of “Jack Point”, “Grimaldi”, and even poor
dear pathetic Dan Leno and Charlie Chaplin—the great comedians who make
you laugh with the tears never very far from your eyes, because they are
so tragically funny; the comedians whose comedy is ever very nearly
tragedy, and who, when they cease to convulse their audiences, look out
at the world with eyes that have in them no mirth, but a great sadness,
which springs from knowledge that they “are paid to be funny”; that
feeling which makes W. S. Gilbert’s “Point” sing:
[Illustration:
_Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, W._ To face p. 222
HARRY AS TOUCHSTONE
“As You Like It”
]
“Though your wife ran away
With a soldier that day,
And took with her your trifle of money—
Bless your heart, they don’t mind,
They’re exceedingly kind;
They don’t blame you so long as you’re funny.”
That is the cry of your jester all the world over, and that was the
feeling which existed in Harry’s mind when he depicted “Touchstone” as a
rather sardonic, melancholy person, with a great brain, the only use for
which he can find is to make people laugh.
I will take only two instances to justify his idea of “Touchstone”. The
first: Are the words
“The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do
foolishly”
those of a “clown” or “a fool” in the ordinary sense?
Take also “Corin’s” words:
“You have too courtly a wit for me, I’ll rest.”
He is frankly puzzled by the Jester’s humour. Yet “Corin” is a typical
shepherd of the times, and an English shepherd (for all we meet him in
the Forest of Arden): as such, he was used to the jokes and witticisms
of the ordinary clown; he had “roared his ribs out” at them at the
village fairs. This “Touchstone” is no ordinary clown, and “Corin” finds
his humour makes a demand upon the head; he is more than “funny”, he is
the Court wit. Read the conversation which has gone before, and you will
find that this is indeed “The Court Jester”, and a courtier before he
was a jester—a man accustomed to sharpen his wits upon those of the men
he met at Courts. And so Harry gave him—a wise man, a disappointed,
cynical man, but a man who could afford to value the wit of those around
him at its proper worth—less than his own.
When Sir Herbert Tree revived _The School for Scandal_, Harry played
“Sir Benjamin Backbite”. Harry, Who loved sincerity, and truth, and
simplicity, played the affected fop of the period, with his cane, his
lace handkerchief, his fur muff, his bouquet, and his general air of
affectation, and played him so that to watch and listen to it was a
sheer delight.
These are but a few of his parts—the parts which, when he played them,
were both praised and blamed. I want to touch on his method of playing,
and call to your memory some of the features which characterised it. He
was always sincere; he might, and did (as in _Eliza_), get bored with a
part, but he was too good an actor, too proud of his work, ever to let
it appear to an audience.
His voice was wonderful; he could put more tenderness, without the least
touch of sentimentality, into his words than anyone I ever heard. To
hear Harry say “My dear”, as he did in _The Dangerous Age_ and again in
_The Law Divine_, was to hear all the essence of love-making, with all
the love in the world behind it, put into two words.
His gesture was superb; he was not, as so many actors are, apparently
afraid of using a big sweeping movement; he (perhaps it was the Irishman
in him) was never afraid that a big gesture would look ridiculous. He
knew that anything, whether tone of voice or gesture or movement is very
rarely ridiculous if it is prompted by real feeling. He knew that the
real justification for anything an actor may do on the stage is “because
I _feel_ it”, not “because I think it will look effective”. As a
producer—and he was one of the best producers I have ever seen—he got
the very last ounce out of his company because he always, when asked
“What do you want me to do here?”, answered “What do you feel you _want_
to do?” He “nursed” his company, and watched them grow strong under his
care.
All his movements were good. He could use his feet in a way that, if
anyone had tried to copy, would have looked ridiculous. He had a little
rapid trick of shifting from one foot to the other, when he was worried
or uncertain, which I have never seen attempted by anyone else. He did
it in the last act of _Twenty-One_, when the girl he loves is trying to
get him to propose to her; he used it again in _A Kiss or Two_, and it
gave you the keynote to the man’s mental attitude as much as his spoken
words. In this latter play, during his telling of the “Legend”, which I
have quoted in another chapter, he used that sweeping gesture of his arm
of which I have spoken. Seated in a chair, leaning forward, carried away
by the story he tells, he comes to the words, “and there in the sunlight
stood a beautiful young woman”. Out went his arm, his eyes following it,
the fingers outspread to take in the whole of the picture, until, when
he looked behind him, looked to where his arm and hand pointed, you
might almost have seen her, “her eyes all agog with laughter”.
He was curiously affected by the parts he played; I mean he actually
became very much the man he depicted on the stage. When he played old
men, he would come home in the evening still very much “in the part”,
inclined to walk slowly and move rather stiffly. When he played young
men—such as “Captain Pat Delaney”, for example—he was gallant, walked
buoyantly, and very evidently was thoroughly in love with life. I have
known him at such times, when we were out together, raise his hat to any
girl we met who was young and pretty—not because he wanted to speak to
her, certainly not because he knew her, but simply because he loved
pretty girls, and wanted an excuse to smile at them, all from the pure
joy of being alive.
So there is Harry Esmond, the actor, as I knew him—enjoying his work,
never letting it sink to anything less than a profession of which he was
very proud. He chose the Stage because he loved it, and he loved it as
long as he lived. He studied each part with a kind of concentrated
interest, and played them as he believed them to be meant to be played.
I think for everything he did he could have given a definite and
sufficient reason, and so believed in what he did. “He hath the letter,
observe his construction of it”; and if his construction was new or
strange, unconventional or untraditional, it was so because that was how
Harry Esmond was convinced it should be.
His position as an actor was something of the attitude of “How happy I
could be with either, were t’other dear charmer away”. He loved all his
work, whether character-studies, gallant soldiers, or tender lovers;
they all claimed the best that was in him, and, as the best was “very
good”, it became not what he could play, but what he could _not_ play.
So I review them mentally, the parts that Harry played, and wonder if he
had been less gifted, if he had not had in his composition that very big
streak of genius, whether he might not perhaps have been one of the
names which will be handed down to posterity as “the world’s greatest
actors”. Then I ask myself in which direction should he have
concentrated, and which of the big parts that he played would I have
been willing to have missed. Which? I cannot decide. “D’Artagnan”,
“Touchstone”, “Sandy”, “Kean”, “Jacob Ussher”, “Mercutio”, even that
really poor part “Little Billee”, were all so good that I am glad he
played them. I think, too, that the success of them all came from a
great understanding as well as great observation, and that was why “one
man in his time” played so many parts, and played them all with more
than ordinary distinction and feeling.