MY BROTHER. MUSIC AND THE DRAMA
My vagabond pen has strayed far from the year 1863; I must retrace my
steps. In the month of April of that year my eldest brother, Percy,
was married to the brilliant daughter of Lord Egerton of Tatton. It
was the happiest of marriages, which was without a cloud until his too
early death in 1883. He was a very clever man, but terribly hampered
by bad health. He was originally in the Army, having entered the 43rd
Regiment, from which he exchanged into the 52nd and afterwards into the
Scots Guards. But he was so crippled with rheumatic gout that he had to
leave the Army, and after a while entered the Diplomatic Service, in
which he served at Berlin, Brussels, Frankfort and Copenhagen. He was
one of the few, the very few men who really mastered the intricacies
of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Some people say that there were
only two—Bismarck and his intimate enemy, the late Sir Robert Morier.
He remained for several years an attaché, and then read for the Bar,
got called, and entered with zeal into politics. He was not successful
in gaining a seat in Parliament, which was a great pity, for he was an
exceptionally effective speaker. However, he was able to render good
service to the Conservative party in other ways.
He had no pretensions to scholarship, but he had the instinct of good
nervous English, which, combined with a sound knowledge of law and of
affairs, made him an excellent writer of pamphlets, leading articles,
and political skits. To be a regular contributor to the _Owl_, which
Laurence Oliphant edited, was a feather in any man’s cap, and he was one
of the seven original signatories of the Primrose League. It is pretty
certain that had he lived he would have made his mark in the political
world. _Dîs aliter visum est_—he died at the moment when life seemed to
be dangling its choicest prizes before him.
* * * * *
In 1858, immediately after leaving Oxford, I was pressed into the Amateur
Musical Society by Henry Leslie, who was then its conductor, and made
to play first cornet. In that year was held the first rehearsal for
the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. The “Dictionary of National
Biography” (Article Costa) gives the date as 1857, which is wrong. The
object was to test the capabilities of the place for a vast orchestra
and chorus. Our Society was invited to join the band, and so it came to
pass that I played at the first cornet’s desk at the rehearsal in 1858,
and afterwards at the Festivals of 1859, 1862, and at the opening of the
great Exhibition in London in the latter year. Costa, afterwards Sir
Michael, conducted.
The people who witnessed the failure of the young Neapolitan baritone at
Birmingham in 1829 could have had no suspicion that they were rejecting a
man who was destined to become a dominant influence in the music of this
country. Costa’s voice was weak and unattractive, but he had already been
deeply schooled in the science of his art by Zingarelli, and had made
some mark as a composer. It was Clementi who recognized his true vocation
as conductor: if the story be true that after his first appearance as
leader, the members of the band, who were not inclined to receive him
with favour, presented him with a box of razors as a way of twitting him
with his youth, there were good judges who at once formed the highest
opinion of his power.
The great Duke of Wellington,[32] who was devoted to music, and never,
if he could help it, missed the “Ancient Concerts” or the opera, was
in a box with my father the first time that he saw Costa conduct. He
was immensely struck by the young conductor’s dominant personality, and
turning round to my father said, “That young man could have commanded an
army.” He recognized a magnetic influence which no one who ever played
under him failed to feel. His sway over his orchestra was phenomenal. He
was the incarnation of masterful will-power. When I first knew him in
about the year 1850 he was forty years of age. A sturdy, powerfully-built
man of about the middle height—curly, rather fair hair—whiskers meeting
under his chin; slightly pitted with the smallpox; a pale complexion.
But what always struck me most about him was the massive lower jaw, that
meant so much. I knew him well till his death in 1884, or rather till
his terrible illness in 1883—paralysis, which deprived him of the power
of speech. The last time I saw him in Pall Mall he could only point with
his finger to his tongue; he shook his head sadly, his eyes filled with
tears, he pressed my hand warmly in a parting which we both knew must be
the last.
I remember the occasion when after we had rehearsed Meyerbeer’s opening
music for the Exhibition of 1862, the composer bowed, thanked the band,
and hailed Costa as the greatest conductor of the world. Richter is
the only conductor that I have seen who could be compared with him.
Leaving on one side the many faults that have been found with Costa as a
musician—chiefly for tampering with scores—I believe no one could excel
him in the art of conveying his intentions to a great army of performers.
When he stepped into the orchestra, firmly grasped his bâton—not holding
it with ladylike daintiness between two fingers as do so many emasculate
conductors of to-day—he would give two curious side to side movements
with his head, a little trick which never failed, and then the beating
of the first bar, firm and decided, made itself felt throughout band and
audience, and one realized the appreciation of the great Duke.
It would hardly be thought likely that the rehearsals of a Handel
Festival would lead to comic incidents—but they did to not a few. One
was at the rehearsal for the miscellaneous day. We were ready for “See
the Conquering Hero Comes.” The chorus was to be heralded by brass
instruments alone. Costa lifted his bâton and called out, “Now, Brass!
One bar for nothing!” Down came the stick and in the dead silence of
“one bar for nothing,” a solitary little tenor voice piped out “See
the Conquering——” He got no further, Costa tapped his desk, folded the
bâton under his arm and roared out, “ARE YOU BRASS?” There was a roar of
laughter. Poor little tenor! He must have wished that the Palace might
collapse and he sink unnoticed in the ruins.
Talking of that day, who that heard it could ever forget the tragic
pathos of Sims Reeves’s singing of “Waft her, Angels”? That and his
thrilling declamation of the recitative at the beginning of the Messiah,
“Comfort ye my people,” are among the most haunting memories of my
musical days.
It was a time of great singers. Amongst our own folk Clara Novello,
Miss Dolby, and Santley with Sims Reeves made a great quartet; for the
rendering of oratorios there could hardly be a finer. Amongst the foreign
artists, Grisi and Mario, Lablache, Ronconi, Graziani, Titiens, Alboni,
Giuglini, Patti, Trebelli, are names that will live.
With Mario and Grisi I was very intimate, they had been old friends of
my father’s; indeed Mario and he had sung together when Mario was an
amateur and came to London as Conte di Candia, a handsome young Sardinian
officer. There were concerts at Bridgewater House at which Lady Sandwich
was the soprano, Miss Gent, a beautiful Irish lady, the contralto, Mario
tenor, and my father the baritone. When Mario made his _début_ in Paris,
my father travelled all the way from Frankfort, posting, to applaud him.
For many years, till I went out to China, I used to go almost every
Sunday during the summer to Mario’s villa to spend the afternoon in
the garden, often remaining to dinner. They kept open house on Sunday,
and I fancy never knew beforehand how many guests they would have—ten?
twelve? twenty? All were made welcome. Madame Grisi at the head of the
table, smiling and beautiful, though no longer young, with her eyes
beaming sweetness, was the picture of happy content. She did not talk
much, but she had just one little kind word for everybody, and a motherly
tenderness which seemed to enfold the whole world upon which those
glorious eyes were looking.
[Illustration: MARIO.
_By Lord Leighton, P.R.A._]
Mario was an altogether delightful companion. He was an artist to his
finger-tips. He was no mean sculptor, a learned collector of books and
manuscripts, a scholar full of appreciation of all that was beautiful and
refined. Many years after the time of which I am writing, when he came
to England for the last time, a little before his death, he telegraphed
to me to say he was in London. I was in the country and came up at once.
He came to my house and we had a long talk over old times. I showed him
some first states of engravings by William Faithorne, the elder. To my
amazement he knew all about them. “Ah! mon cher,” said he in explanation,
“J’ai eu toutes les folies.”
In the days of his opulence his charity and generosity knew no bounds.
Many of his compatriots lived upon him. One day I was walking with him
in his garden at Fulham, when up came a caricature of a man, as tall and
lean as a church tower, with a hat that reached the skies, dressed in a
long snuff-coloured coat falling to his heels, a grizzled beard, and a
cascade of grey hair over his shoulders; a figure out of Struwel Peter.
He made a low sweeping bow as if he meant to cut the turf with his hat.
“Signor Mario!” another obeisance, hand on heart, and once more the
steeple hat shaved the grass. “Ah! Dottor Beggé, what have you there?”
“Signor Mario, I hold here a manuscript”—producing a roll from under
his arm—“but a manuscript! such a manuscript!” and he blew a kiss into
the air. “Well! What do you want for it?” asked Mario. “For you, Signor
Mario, a mere nothing, only twenty pounds sterling.” Mario looked at it,
bought it, and the long Doctor, bowing even lower than before, stalked
off happy. Mario turned round to me and said, “Ca ne vaut pas vingt sous!
Mais, ce pauvre Beggé, il faut bien qu’il vive.”
Another Sunday an obviously very impecunious Italian came up and told a
piteous story of misery at home. Mario did not hesitate a moment; he told
the man to go to his room, open a drawer in his writing-table where he
would find some notes and gold, and take what he wanted. He was a grand,
large-hearted, generous creature; one of the most lovable of men.
In his later days Mario used to be subject to sudden flushing and slight
giddiness—out of this the jealousy and ill-nature of rivals got up the
myth that he drank. He was well aware of this and made fun of it. At
dinner one evening there was some Château Lafitte of ’48 on the table;
Mario poured out a quarter of a tumbler of this and filled it up with
water. I told him that it was an act of vandalism to drown so rare a
wine. He held up the glass laughing and said, “Mon cher, c’est avec cela
que je me suis fait une réputation d’ivrogne.” Sometimes after dinner a
valse would be played and Mario would call out, “Chi vuol ballare con
Papa?” and he would dance with his children, then little girls, like a
boy in his teens. They adored him and their mother, who looked on radiant.
One met many famous people in that villa. There it was that I last saw
the Countess Castiglione—still beautiful, though, dreading as it was
said that her beauty might fade, she had already retired from the world
before her charms should begin to wane. The first time I met her was at
an afternoon party at Holland House, a dream of loveliness acknowledged
by everybody; not a fault to be found from the crown of her head to the
tips of her feet, and what arms and hands! Then she was in her pride of
queendom, radiant, attracting all eyes. Now she was dressed in black,
thickly veiled, and speaking only to Mario and Grisi. But disguise
herself as she might, she could not altogether hide her transcendent
charms.
Whether speaking or singing, I have never heard such a voice as Mario’s.
It was pure music. The best testimony to its quality came to me
secondhand from Richard Wagner. I was talking with Siegfried Wagner about
voices, and I said that without a doubt the finest tenor that I had ever
known was Mario. “Yes,” said Siegfried, “my father always said the same
thing.” This witness is the more valuable as no one could accuse Wagner
of any predilection for the Italian school of song.
Giuglini, the tenor of the rival house where Titiens reigned supreme,
used to be compared with Mario; but in my judgment this was absurd.
Giuglini’s voice, lovely as it was, had a slight defect of “throatiness,”
whereas Mario’s voice came pure and clear from the chest. On the stage
there was absolutely no comparison between the two men. Mario’s great
beauty and his marvellous power of acting, combined with an irresistible
personal charm, made him unique. It would be difficult to imagine
anything more thrilling than the tragedy of the two great duets with
Grisi in the _Huguenots_ and the _Favorita_.
Older people were wont to say that when he first appeared on the stage
he was a “stick,” and that it was Grisi who taught him and inspired him
with the fire of her own genius. If that was so, she found an apt pupil.
She was certainly an incomparable actress, but the talent must have been
latent in him too, even though the credit of having called it forth may
belong to her.
In his last years, when he had retired from the stage, had lost his
fortune, and was custode of a museum, Queen Margherita was extremely
anxious to hear him sing, and commissioned Edoardo Vera, her music
master, to try and get him to do so. After some difficulty Vera, who
told me the story, succeeded, and transposed one or two of his old songs
for him so that he was really singing as a baritone. So managed, Vera
told me that the voice was as velvety and beautiful as ever. The Queen
was delighted, and the dear old Mario, white-haired and white-bearded,
charmed with his reception. I can well believe in the unimpaired beauty
of so much of the singing voice as remained, for when last I saw him in
1879, his speaking voice was still instinct with the same music that I
remembered when in the opening of the _Barbiere_ he used to call out to
Figaro behind the scenes. He died on the 11th of December, 1883.
During the last few years of her life, Grisi’s voice began to show signs
of wear and tear. It was generally as full and sonorous as ever, and the
“bel canto” was glorious. But now and then the notes would fail her, and
sometimes it made one nervous to listen to her. Vera, always witty and
not seldom ill-natured, once answered when someone said, “La Grisi a
toujours de bien beaux moments.” “Oui, mais en revanche elle a des fichus
quarts d’heure.” That was exaggeration born of jealousy, for Vera had a
sister Sophie, whom he adored, and who always had to sing Adalgisa when
he would fain have had her take Grisi’s place as Norma.
Of one musical recollection I am very proud. Grisi, in 1859, chose me to
play the cornet obbligato for her in a Romance by Vera, “Cari fior ch’io
stessa colsi,” and it ended with a double cadence for the voice and the
obbligato instrument. The second time that I accompanied her was at a
concert at Dudley House given for the benefit of a poor Italian baritone,
Ciabatta, who was dying of consumption. He, poor fellow, had little
voice for the opera, but was an excellent singing master. His misfortune
was that he was one of the handsomest men that could be seen, a perfect
Apollo, and so when he took the best recommendations, he was rejected as
dangerous. “Toujours la même histoire,” he said piteously once, after a
barren morning’s lesson-hunting, “les mamans ne veulent pas de moi! Elles
disent toutes que je suis trop beau.”
Of course, because Mario had a villa at Fulham, Giuglini, as representing
the rival house, must have one also. His villa had a long strip of garden
with a sundial at the bottom of it. Here on Sundays he would invite his
friends, and when they were gathered together he would cover the sundial
with breadcrumbs, attracting sparrows, tits, blackbirds and thrushes. As
soon as there was a sufficient congregation of these poor innocents, he,
standing in the verandah, would send for a gun and blaze away at them,
exclaiming to his admiring guests, “Voyez-vous, j’adore la chasse!” What
a sportsman! Of his success and charm as a singer there can be no doubt;
that he did not please me better was probably my own fault. His end was a
sad one. He lost his reason and died miserably in an asylum, singing, as
I have been told, to the last, spending his lovely voice in the solitude
of a madman’s cell.
Jenny Lind I only heard after she had left the stage. Her operatic career
was a short one: so far as London was concerned it only lasted two years.
Her first appearance was in 1847, her last in 1849, when she was only
twenty-nine years old. She continued to sing in concerts and oratorios
and made a very successful tour in America, but the theatre knew her no
more.
I can well remember how all London went mad over her in the _Figlia del
Reggimento_, when she reached the zenith of her fame. In later years,
when she was a woman of about forty, I used to meet her and her husband
at the house of a friend. She was a tallish, stately, typical Swedish
woman, with a wealth of fair hair, no special beauty of feature, but
an expression and above all a smile that were of angelic goodness. The
voice was still crystal-clear, true and sweet; even the highest notes—and
heaven knows what altitudes she reached!—were as soft and caressing as
those of the middle register.
In my friend’s little drawing-room, with perhaps half a dozen people
present, all sympathetic, Goldsmid would sit down at the piano, and she
would pour out her soul, like the “Swedish Nightingale” that she was, in
liquid music, shedding around her a happiness which she herself surely
felt. Those little modest dinners were feasts indeed.
Later on in these sketches I hope to have a good deal to say about Thomas
Carlyle, but one conversation that I had with him seems to fit in so well
here that I feel inclined to take it out of its turn. It is strange that
he, who could so cruelly scourge the opera as he did in the “Keepsake”
for 1852,[33] should have spoken, with all the rugged enthusiasm that was
in him, both of Jenny Lind and Grisi.
I forget how the subject cropped up, but he went off at score,
contrasting the two: “The burning, passionate nature of the fiery
Southern woman with the calm, cold temperament of the Northern
singer”—those were his very words. Of the two I think that, Scot though
he was, the fire of the South appealed to him more than the snows of the
North. He preached on for several minutes, giving due meed of praise to
both the great singers, but always with a tilt of the scale in favour of
Grisi.
Then from the opera he passed on to the stage, and there he recognized
one figure above all others. He told me how he had seen Talma act in
Paris—how great he was—how far ahead of all other actors. What appealed
to him strongly was the statuesque side of the famous player’s genius,
how completely he looked the part he was acting, especially in the old
classical tragedies. “That man could so drape himself in a toga that
you just felt that you had one of the ancient Romans before you.” When
Carlyle spoke it was with the fire that he admired in “the Southern
woman.” Ecclefechan could vie with Palermo. The lava of his volcanic
talk swept all before it. I should have liked to have got him to speak
of former lights of the English stage—the Kembles, the elder Kean and
others. But it was of no use trying to stop him when once he had started.
As easily might you hold the waters of Lodore with a butterfly-net. It
was Jenny Lind, Grisi, Talma—nothing else.
There were some great actors in my young days. The infectious high
spirits of the younger Charles Mathews, the solemn fun of Buckstone,
Keeley, Toole and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi (the Paul-y-Tooly-technic,
as some wag called it), Wigan and Leigh Murray, Benjamin Webster and many
others were grand assets in the gaiety of the nation. It is something to
have seen Charles Mathews in _London Assurance_, Wigan with his perfect
French, in _The First Night_ (_Le Père de la Débutante_), Keeley and
Leigh Murray in _The Camp at Chobham_. What perfection of acting! In
light comedy and farce the English stage has always been richly endowed.
Of tragedy perhaps the less said the better.
In the early fifties Macready, Phelps and Charles Kean were supposed
to be the shining lights among the tragedians—Macready, indeed, soon
about to pass into a tradition.[34] To me they gave no pleasure.
They seemed to rant and roar and mouth, tearing to tatters Othello,
Shylock, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear. Their methods were purely academic,
mechanical and utterly unnatural. There was plenty of elocution, plenty
of declamation—nothing spontaneous, nothing humanly possible; everything
taught, nothing felt; of true emotion, begetting emotion in others, not a
trace.
I once, in 1856, saw _Othello_ played in a barn at Killarney; the Moor
was rather drunk, but he was as academic as the great professors; between
him and them there was small difference. It was a question of degree. But
here am I daring to criticize when I do not even know the jargon of the
trade. What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among
the critics?
Be it my right to speak or not, I shall maintain that Robson, the
meteoric man who for so short a time was a blazing light in the
theatrical firmament, was the greatest actor that I ever saw on any stage
at home or abroad. Upon him the mantle of Garrick had fallen, for there
was no branch of his art that came amiss to him. He made his reputation
in grotesque farces such as _The Wandering Minstrel_ and _Boots at the
“Swan,”_ in which he showed the town masterpieces of eccentric character
study; in burlesque he had no rival; and now and then, as in _The Yellow
Dwarf_, he would burst into a fury of passionate acting without any
suspicion of rant, that sent cold thrills through the house, making men
feel what he would have been capable of achieving in tragedy.
But he was small, puny and weak, and probably his frame would hardly have
carried him through one of the grand heroic parts. Where he was at his
best and greatest was in such tender, appealing plays as _The Porter’s
Knot_. Here was the real spirit of tragedy, and here he differed from the
schoolmen of whom I have spoken, just as the pathos of a story of misery
and woe, told simply and plainly from heart to heart by the sufferer
himself, differs from the artificial emotion cooked up for a jury by a
lawyer. He could draw tears from the stoniest. Unhappily the feeble body
was soon worn out; his arduous work exhausted him; stimulants kept him up
to the mark for a time, but they, too, exacted their penalty. His London
successes lasted but some eight years, for he retired from the stage in
1862, and two years later he died, being not much more than forty years
old.
When Dion Boucicault brought out _The Colleen Bawn_ with his beautiful
wife as the Colleen, his Miles na Coppaleen fairly took the town by
storm. The devil-may-care Irish joyousness which he threw into the part
was irresistible, and carried actors and audience with it from his
first entrance to the end. But there was one part of his which was even
more striking. When he played _The Vampire_, the performance was so
horrifying, so ghastly in its realism, that, if I remember right, it was
soon withdrawn on that account. The public could not stand it, and it was
not brought out again. It was a haunting performance.
First nights in the Victorian days were not the fashionable gatherings
that they now are. People took no more notice of them than they did of
ordinary performances. That accounted for my being present, quite by
accident, at the first night of _The Bells_ on the 25th of November,
1871. The sensation which Irving created in it was sudden and startling.
It was a magnificent success, and Irving’s fame was made. But what I
thought even better was his performance of Jingle in _Pickwick_, by which
the famous play was preceded. He was Jingle to the life. The impudent,
lean, hungry, out-at-elbows stroller and swindler was a very picture of
bohemian destitution. Irving’s many successes, his shortcomings and his
mannerisms are of too recent date to need dwelling upon. Whether he was
a great tragedian or not has been much debated; but I never heard two
opinions as to his powers in comedy; his Jingle, his Jeremy Diddler and
his Doricourt in _The Belle’s Stratagem_ were probably as perfect comedy
as could be seen. Personally he was one of the most charming of men, and
he made many fast friends.
I was present at a small party of men which he once gave after the
play at the Lyceum. King Edward, then Prince of Wales, and many of the
foremost men of the day had accepted his invitation. Toole was there,
full of fun, and Irving recited the scene with the waiter in “David
Copperfield.” He just stood leaning against the chimney-piece and told
the story. But how he told it! That was an inimitable performance.
The party did not break up until long after cock-crow. I drove away
with Russell Lowell, the American Minister, in a belated, or rather
be-earlied, hansom cab; it was summer time and broad daylight, and we
two elderly gentlemen felt very dissipated and rather ashamed of being
seen, but we both agreed that it would have been difficult to have a more
agreeable gathering or a more genial host. The verdict of Lowell, wit,
poet, diplomatist, man of letters and man of charm, was conclusive.
Of great actors England has always been prolific. I have left out many of
those who were stars in the fifties and sixties. I have, for instance,
said nothing of my friend Sir Squire Bancroft, whose memory must live if
only for the noble use to which, for many years, he has devoted his great
talents.
In great actresses, for some mysterious reason, we have not been so rich.
When men talk of women who have been distinguished in tragedy, they still
go back to the fame of Mrs. Siddons. Miss O’Neill is now forgotten.
As Lady Becher I used constantly to meet her at the house of old Lady
Essex (the famous Miss Stevens), who used to gather round her, together
with all that was smartest in society, the fine flower of the world of
art—almost all the great musicians whom I have mentioned above, Leighton,
Landseer, Marochetti, Chorley, Planché and a host of celebrities. Lady
Becher as an old lady, cold, stiff and alarming, certainly did not give
one the idea of an actress who could so picture sorrow and agony as to
create emotion. But of English tragic actresses whom I myself have seen
I can recall but two—Adelaide Neilson and Ellen Terry. I wish we could
claim the beautiful Mary Anderson, who _vera incessu patuit Dea_—but
she, alas! is an American, though for the joy of Gloucestershire and
Worcestershire she has made her home at Broadway. Adelaide Neilson worked
her way to fame from beginnings of the poorest and the most squalid;
she was an exemplification of the Japanese proverb “The lotus flower
springs from the mud.” Here again was a meteor, for she died in Paris
when only thirty-two years old; but she had lived long enough to win
admiration by her beauty and great talent. Her lovable qualities appealed
to her friends, and her kindness of heart endeared her to her brother
and sister players. She was a born actress, and was endowed with that
greatest of all gifts for a tragedian—the gift so conspicuous in Sarah
Bernhardt—a speaking voice soft and tender, full of musical pathos and
emotion, a voice which would of itself have aroused sympathy had she been
less winsome in other ways than she was. But in truth she was a most
attractive woman, beautiful to look at and a joy to listen to. Her early
death left a void in the English stage.
Of Ellen Terry I need not speak. All men know what she is, and none deny
her sovereignty. Besides, I am dealing only with the past. Will the
future bring anything quite so charming?
Fifty or sixty years ago the palm went to the elder actresses. Mrs.
Sterling as Peg Woffington in Tom Taylor and Charles Reade’s _Masks and
Faces_, playing up to Benjamin Webster’s Triplet, was one of the most
extraordinary pieces of acting that I ever saw; and when she appeared as
the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ one could only mourn over the cruelty of
time, feeling of how delightful a Juliet the years had robbed us. Mrs.
Wigan, acting with her husband as Mrs. Sternhold in _Still Waters run
Deep_, was memorably good, and when in _The Bengal Tiger_, in order to
win the heart of the old Nabob (again Alfred Wigan as the tiger), she
tried to smoke a hookah, her agonies were excruciatingly funny. Mrs.
Keeley, too, was a tower of strength to any company. Her Jack Sheppard
lives in my memory, as indeed do many of her parts, as a most finished
dramatic picture—the prison scene absolutely harrowing. Like Robson and
Garrick, she could be tragic or comic at will. In our young actresses,
_ingénues_, we were not so fortunate as the play-goers of the present day.
But we did possess one star, at any rate, of the first magnitude.
In 1862, when Miss Kate Terry appeared in _The Duke’s Motto_ with
Fechter,[35] whose triumphs at Paris with Madame Doche in the creation
of the _Dame aux Camélias_ were world-famous, all London, from Charles
Dickens downwards, vowed that such romantic acting had never been seen
and could never be beaten. The fascination of the love scenes was
bewildering. There was nothing theatrical about them. They were the
very poetry of emotion. When she left the stage after a very short and
brilliant career to become the gracious châtelaine of Moray Lodge, that
small portion of the world which calls itself Society was the gainer, but
to the world at large it was a heavy loss.
Miss Madge Robertson, now Mrs. Kendal, was both a lovely girl and a most
fascinating actress. She it was, unless my memory fails me, who with her
husband created Gilbert’s _Pygmalion and Galatea_, which was also one of
Miss Mary Anderson’s great parts. Gilbert was lucky in getting two such
ladies to interpret him.
A list is mostly only interesting to those who appear in it, and this is
mere list-making; no more than an attempt to register for the present
generation the names of those who delighted their grandfathers—and most
of those who are in it have _dis_appeared. But even from a list it is
impossible to omit the name of Lady Bancroft. To all who saw her she
will always remain a charming memory of the days when all the youth of
London was in love with Miss Marie Wilton—across the footlights. Her
sparkling gaiety, her delicious little impertinencies, her irresistible
spirits, her entirely fascinating personality, were so full of life
that the doctors might have prescribed a stall at the Strand Theatre
for their rundown patients, when she was playing Pippo in _The Maid
and the Magpie_, or one of her other burlesque parts. Then came the
days of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre and Tom Robertson’s famous plays,
_Society_, _Caste_, _Ours_, _School_—and here again Miss Marie Wilton
proved her great powers in a new line. Acting more subtle and more
refined has perhaps never been seen. Her troupe, moreover, was famous
for the all-round excellence with which the pieces were given; it used
to be a reproach to the English stage that if there were a first-rate
star in the company, the rest of the characters were more or less left
to chance, and people used to compare the slovenliness of our theatres
with the exquisitely finished detail of Paris. At the Prince of Wales’s
Theatre, under the Bancroft management, the finish given to the smallest
parts was as careful and fastidious as that which marked the play of
the chief actors. The result was a harmonious whole, setting an example
which has wrought the best influence on our stage. The old slip-shod
performances which I can remember would now no longer be tolerated, and
for their disappearance much gratitude is owing to the Bancrofts. _Caste_
was, perhaps, their masterpiece. Lady Bancroft’s Polly Eccles, with her
husband as Captain Hawtree, and Sir John Hare as Eccles, made the piece a
landmark in the history of the English drama.
Of the gynæceum of the English stage I have no more to say. It would be
pleasing for a veteran play-goer like myself to pay his tribute to the
charm of such delightful actresses as Miss Irene Vanbrugh, Miss Marie
Tempest, Miss Gladys Cooper and others. Their praises must be left to be
sung by their own contemporaries, of whom I only wish that I were one.