In the concluding chapters of Ellen Terry’s memoirs
(_McClure’s Magazine_), she writes of the last days of
Henry Irving. The doctor had warned Irving not to play “The
Bells” again after an illness that attacked him in the spring of
1905. He saw the “terrible emotional strain ‘The Bells’ put upon
Henry”--how he never could play the part of _Matthias_ “on
his head,” as he could _Louis XI_, for example. Miss Terry
goes on in words almost implying that _Matthias_ killed
him. We read:
“Every time he heard the sound of bells, the throbbing of his
heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite
white--there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting
physically on the body.
“His death as _Matthias_--the death of a strong, robust
man--was different from all his other stage deaths. He did
really almost die--he imagined his death with such horrible
intensity. His eyes would disappear upward, his face grow gray,
his limbs cold.
“No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton
doctor’s warning was disregarded, and Henry played ‘The Bells,’
at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within
twenty-four hours of his death as _Matthias_, he was dead.”
(1657)