Henry Irving has often been attacked for not preferring Robert Louis
Stevenson's "Macaire" to the version which he actually produced in
1883. It would have been hardly more unreasonable to complain of his
producing "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality
that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only
making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a
burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was
_not_ a burlesque house! Why should Henry have done it?
It was funny to see Toole and Henry rehearsing together for "Macaire."
Henry was always _plotting_ to be funny. When Toole, as Jacques Strop,
hid the dinner in his pocket, Henry, after much labour, thought of his
hiding the plate inside his waistcoat. There was much laughter later
on when Macaire, playfully tapping Strop with his stick, cracked the
plate, and the pieces fell out! Toole hadn't to bother about such
subtleties, and Henry's deep-laid plans for getting a laugh must have
seemed funny to dear Toole, who had only to come on and say "Whoop!"
and the audience roared.
Henry's death as Macaire was one of a long list of splendid deaths.
Macaire knows the game is up and makes a rush for the French windows
at the back of the stage. The soldiers on the stage shoot him before
he gets away. Henry did not drop, but turned round, swaggered
impudently down to the table, leaned on it, then suddenly rolled over,
dead.
Henry's production of "Werner" for one matinée was to do some one a
good turn, and when Henry did a good turn he did it magnificently. We
rehearsed the play as carefully as if we were in for a long run.
Beautiful dresses were made for me by my friend Alice Carr, but when
we had given that one matinée they were put away for ever. The play
may be described as gloom, gloom, gloom. It was worse than "The Iron
Chest."
While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner" I was pleasing myself
with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was
at this time Wills' secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help
Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of
Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinée of it at some other
theatre, but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said:
"You must do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the
theatre."
So we had the matinée at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree
were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry
saw me act--a whole part and from the "front," at least, for he had
seen and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had
known me such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a
surprise. "I wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you
realised," he wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me,
and I continued to do it "on and off," in England and in America,
until 1902.
Many people said that I was good, but that the play was bad. This was
hard on Alfred Calmour. He had created the opportunity for me, and few
plays with the beauty of "The Amber Heart" have come my way since. "He
thinks it's all his doing!" said Henry. "If he only knew!" "Well,
that's the way of authors!" I answered. "They imagine so much more
about their work than we put into it that although we may seem to the
outsider to be creating, to the author we are, at our best, only doing
our duty by him!"
Our next production was "Macbeth"; but meanwhile we had visited
America three times. In the next chapter I shall give an account of my
tours in America, of my friends there; and of some of the impressions
that the vast, wonderful country made on me.
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