I
Was Sir Henry Irving a great actor? Possibly; there is abundant
testimony, little evidence. The testimony of Englishmen is to be
received with caution, for Irving was an Englishman; that of Americans
with greater caution, for the same reason. The narrowest provincialism
in the world is that of great cities, and London is the greatest
city. What London says all England repeats; and America affirms it on
oath. It is understood, as a matter of course, that in the judgment
of England the best English actor, writer or artist is the best in
the world. If one has conquered his way to the foremost place in the
approval of a small London clique, not, in the case of an actor,
exceeding a half-dozen men promoted to power by a process of selection
with which ability has had nothing to do, one has conquered half the
world. It would be easy to name the half-dozen who made Henry Irving’s
fame and set it sailing o’er the seas with bellying canvas and flag
apeak. On this side no one ever demanded the ship’s papers. This is
Echoland, home of the ditto-maniac. We are freemen, but not bigoted
ones.
For aught I know Irving may have been as good an actor as his
countrymen who saw him thought him. Nay, he may have been half as good
as my countrymen who did not see him think him. I myself saw him play
only two or three times. He was not then a good actor, but that was
a long time before his death; judgment from the fading memory of a
performance decades ago would hardly do. Wherein, then, lies excuse
of this present infervency—this cry _qui vive_ at the outpost of
the camp? Herein. Not only were Irving’s credentials defective; there
is a strong presumption that the defect was irreparable—that they
“certificate a sham.” This defect was racial. The English are, if not
an unemotional, an undemonstrative people. When sad the Englishman does
not weep, when pleased he does not laugh. Anger him and he will neither
stamp nor tear his hair; startle him and he jumps not an inch. His
conversation is destitute of vivacity and unaided by gesticulation.
His face does not light up when he deems it his duty to smile. His
transports of affection are moderated to the seemly ceremony of shaking
hands; though he is said sometimes to kiss his grandmother if she is
past seventy and will let him. Removed from his brumous environment,
the English human being becomes in time accessible to light and
heat—penetrable by the truth that all manifestation of emotion and
sentiment is not necessarily vulgar; but in the tight little isle
Stolidity holds her immemorial sway without other change in the
administrative function than occasional substitution of the stare of
deprecation for the stare of complacency.
To suppose that great actors can come of a race like that is to
trifle with the laws of nature. Acting is preëminently the art of
expression—expression of the sentiments and emotions by speech, look,
gesture, movement—in every way that one person can address the eye and
ear of another. It requires the acutest and alertest sensibilities,
faculties all responsive to subtle stirs of feeling. Are these English
characteristics? Clearly not; they are those of the peoples that (in
England) are despised as “volatile,” “garrulous,” “excitable”—the
French and Italians, for examples, who have produced the only really
good actors of modern times. Our own actors are better than the
English, but not good; one sees better acting about a dining-table
in Paris than has ever been seen on the stage of London or New
York—excepting when it is held by players in whose veins is the fire of
Southern suns, whose nerves dance to the rhythmic beat of Mediterranean
ripples and
keep, with Capri’s sunny fountains,
Perpetual holiday.
One pale globule of our cold Teutonic blood queers the whole
performance. For German, English and American actors society should
provide “homes,” with light employment, good plain food and, when they
keep their mouths shut and their limbs quiet, thunders of artificial
applause.