SOME ACTORS
Theatrically the Nineties were less interesting than the preceding
decade. The Eighties saw the great glories both of the Savoy and the
Lyceum; they might be likened to a glorious May and a blazing June;
the Nineties were rather a tired late summer fading into an inglorious
autumn. There was little new, and the old was not quite at its best.
Perhaps it was the discovery by a large class of a new pleasure that
chiefly contributed to make the theatre of thirty and forty years ago
an institution only second in interest to politics. The theatre-going
habit has now become general; the theatre itself tends to be a specialist
interest—like sport. Certain classes of young people have their pet
pieces and actors, and perhaps lavish on them just as much worship as
their grandfathers and grandmothers did on Irving and Ellen Terry, on
Grossmith and Jessie Bond, on Hare, and Wyndham, and Toole. But no actor
or actress commands the same general adoration that was rendered to the
great stage people of the golden age when the cinema and the standardised
music-hall were still unborn. The most splendid first night is only
an item in the morning’s news. In the old days it competed seriously
with a despatch from the Front or the speech of a Prime Minister. I can
well remember the appearance of the daily papers on the morrow of a new
Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The sketch of the plot and extracts from the
libretto occupied perhaps three columns; another couple of columns were
devoted to the score; perhaps another one and a half to the dresses and
the “brilliant house.” It is true that we have no Gilbert and Sullivan
to-day. But if both were with us in the happiest inspiration of their
whole collaboration it is inconceivable that they should occupy such a
space in the public eye. The viands of the Eighties and Nineties may be
equalled again; after all, with the solitary exception of light opera,
they were not specially wonderful. It is the appetite that we seek in
vain. The English people were then, theatrically speaking, children, and
had the zest of the child. They have since grown up, and, while leaning
more on stronger drink, find the tipple less exhilarating.
* * * * *
How much of the earlier glories of the Lyceum were due to the fascination
exerted by Miss Ellen Terry, and how much to the genius of Henry Irving,
must always remain a matter of opinion. But concerning Irving’s greatness
there can be only one view. There were all sorts of things he was not. He
was not a good judge of a play; whenever he forsook the straight path of
Shakespeare he tended woefully to the pretentious or the trivial. He was
in some ways not even a good actor; his mannerisms were often unpleasing,
and his declamation was sometimes absurd. He was not, probably, a man
of very high general intellect. But one thing Irving undoubtedly was:
he was great—as great in his own line as Gladstone in Gladstone’s. He
dominated the stage as no other man did in his time, or has done since,
and he raised the whole public conception of the profession to a level
before undreamed of. The diaries of Macready are full of lamentations
concerning the hard fate which condemned an authentic public school boy
to a degrading servitude. When Irving sent his own boys to Marlborough
the arrangement seemed perfectly natural, and when they left nobody was
astonished that they should follow their father’s instead of the more
“reputable” careers which Macready eyed with envy.
This elevation of the stage was very largely Irving’s personal work, and
it was a work which no common man could have achieved. Irving was a most
uncommon man. Though natural and unaffected in private, he impressed
everybody with whom he came in contact, and was almost more eloquent in
his silences than in his speech, excellent as that was. He was a quite
incomparable host, and no man ever received so various a society: nearly
everybody who was anybody knew Irving. The Emperor Frederick and Mr.
Gladstone were among the many distinguished people who at one time or
another “went behind” at the Lyceum, and the list of those who partook
of Irving’s “chicken and champagne”—to quote a long-lived remark of a
rather ill-natured critic—would swell to the limits of a select “Who was
Who.” For instance, at the Diamond Jubilee in 1897 he entertained all the
Colonial Premiers, Indian Princes, and visitors from overseas who had
been mentioned in the official lists!
All this lavish hospitality meant the spending of money, and money could
only come by labour. As he went on, Irving put a greater and greater
strain on his nervous system, and, made of steel as he seemed in his
prime, he suffered heavily in later years for his prodigal expenditure
of energy. His luck turned about the middle of the Nineties; a seemingly
slight accident cast him aside for best part of three months, involving
a heavy loss; a year later he suffered heavily by the burning of his
stage properties; still another year, and he was stricken with an
illness which left a permanent mark on his physique and his spirit. For
some years an overpowering depression rested on him, a sense of tragic
disappointment, and it was only when he had reached the confines of
old age that his old serenity returned. But even in the heyday of his
success he never showed more essential gallantry than in the last fight
against embarrassment, infirmity, and (in a sense) solitude. He had not
been spoiled by his successes, and he remained above his reverses. He
should have died, considering the vast sums he received, a rich man—his
last tour in America yielded him, for example, a net profit of over
£32,000—but, if he was “unsatisfied in getting,” he was too princely in
bestowing to save money. Himself temperate, sparing in diet, satisfied
with moderate lodgment, without vices or personal extravagances, and
no gambler, he literally showered money on all pursuits and projects
tending to increase the finish of his own productions or to improve the
standing of the stage in the eyes of the world. He was the first to
translate into terms of gorgeous expense Mr. Crummies’s faith in “real
water—splendid tubs.” In his plays no detail was omitted. For _Becket_ he
obtained the services of a high Roman Catholic dignitary to secure that
the cathedral scenes, while impressively realistic to the general, should
not offend the religious susceptibilities of the understanding. This
devotion to stage upholstery set a vicious fashion of subordinating the
picture to the frame, the actor to the scenery, and in the end it nearly
ruined Irving. But it had its due effect in raising the stage in public
estimation; clearly anything which wanted so much capital could not be
quite disreputable.
* * * * *
Irving was survived nearly a year by his old friend Toole. Like Irving,
Toole started as a London clerk, but, while Irving to the last retained
some small trace of his native province, Somersetshire, Toole was wholly
Cockney. The pair met at Edinburgh in 1857, and the friendship then
formed lasted undiminished till Irving’s death. When Toole was told the
news he said quietly, “Then let me die too.” Toole’s chief triumphs
came before the Nineties, and the young people who saw him for the few
years before his retirement could hardly comprehend the legend that had
gathered round his name. Still less could they appreciate the stories of
his rather naïve fooling in private. But then, all humour is a mystery,
and people who “sneer when you inform them that a door may be a jar” will
roar their sides out at something no more complex, but more modish.
* * * * *
Irving, much as he had to do with the making of the modern stage, smacked
a good deal of the floridity of an earlier period. Sir John Hare was more
typical of modern finish; his acting in _A Pair of Spectacles_ set a
standard that may often have been equalled by the polished comic actors
of to-day, but has hardly been excelled. Hare got so much in the habit
of playing old gentlemen’s parts that he had the credit of being much
more advanced in years than he really was. He was once at dinner where
Mr. Gladstone was also a guest. “Who is that?” whispered Gladstone to his
hostess. “Hare? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I once met his father, the manager of
the Garrick.”
Hare belonged to a distinctly higher social class than either Irving
or Toole. So also did Sir Charles Wyndham. The son of a London doctor,
he had received a first-rate education, and practised for some time as
a doctor before going on the stage. A handsome person, great vivacity,
and a well-bred lightness of touch made him a king of comedy, and his
tradition is still one of the strongest inspirations in the modern
theatre.
* * * * *
No account of the entertainers of the Nineties would be complete without
reference to a form of amusement which, though it still exists in a small
way, was in its biggest way thirty years ago. Its chief exponents were
Corney Grain and George Grossmith. The German Reed entertainments have
now a very far-away sound; the sight of the name gives the same sort
of feeling as the sign over some old-fashioned confectioners’, “Routs
Catered For.” Yet German Reed was very much alive in its time. It could
not be otherwise with the aid of so very vital a person as the gigantic
Corney Grain. Grain, who was intended for the Bar, reached the stage by
easy stages of amateurism and semi-professionalism, and his career was
complicated by a difficulty of classification. At first the Press would
barely notice him, because the musical critics said he was not Music, and
the dramatic critics said he was not Drama, and everybody agreed that
he was not Art. The German Reed entertainment, however, at last found
its public—a very peculiar one, very proper, very middle-class, and very
much intrigued with what were supposed to be the ways and humours of
a superior order of society. It is a public now very largely extinct;
people want either stronger or more delicate meat. But those days were
different. They were the days when nigger minstrels were a considerable
“financial proposition.” I remember well the Press agent of one famous
troop complaining to a Brighton newspaper that they had received scant
notice during the visit of Sarah Bernhardt. “If it were a circus I could
understand, but fancy playing second fiddle to that Frenchwoman!” he
remarked in high dungeon. Both with the minstrels and with German Reed
people could be sure of a due censorship of jokes and songs; they could
enjoy all the luxury of wickedness without wickedness itself. “Thank you,
Mr. Grain,” said a bishop once at the end of a performance, “I have been
not only amused, but—edified.”
George Grossmith also tended to edification. In physique he was the exact
opposite of Corney Grain, wizen and under-sized, and once when they
appeared together—the rivals were very excellent friends—Grain ended a
scene by picking up Grossmith and carrying him off the stage like a baby.
George Grossmith was the son of one of those curious men who supply the
newspapers with police court reports; the business is largely hereditary,
and in this case the son began life as assistant to his father. Police
courts, however, rarely sit late, and the “liners” have considerable
leisure to follow any other occupation. Grossmith _père_ was already
established as a lecturer and entertainer, and it was quite natural that
the two sons—George and Weedon—should follow in his footsteps. In the
late Seventies George attracted the notice of Sir Arthur Sullivan, and as
a result had a run of twelve years in Savoy Opera. Gilbert was at first
violently opposed to the introduction, but had to acknowledge that it
was a great success, though he could never refrain from an occasional
tilt at what he considered the vulgarities of Grossmith’s style. In a
certain part Grossmith received a box on the ear from one of the female
characters, and used to fall head over heels on the stage. “I should
be very much obliged if you would omit that piece of business, Mr.
Grossmith,” suggested Gilbert. “Why? I get a tremendous laugh with it,”
pleaded the actor. “So you would if you sat down on a pork pie,” retorted
Gilbert, who could never bear that applause should be diverted from his
“book” by mere “gag.”
It was just at the end of the Eighties that Grossmith left the Savoy
for the business of “society entertainer” on the Corney Grain plan. He
made an immediate success, the best tribute to which may be quoted;
it was that of a girl at a Yorkshire seaside place: “Oh, how we did
laugh! It was laugh, laugh, laugh! All the people kept laughing, and
then we laughed. Then the people laughed again, and so did we, and when
we got home we laughed more than ever, for none of us knew what we had
been laughing at.” But for that happy weakness of human nature, fewer
professional funny men would pay super-tax.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In a work like the present, where personal impressions are so largely
mingled with the results of general and special reading, it is not
easy to give the authority for every statement. Specific borrowings
are indicated in the text. The author, however, would like to add an
acknowledgment of his general obligation to the following:
“Recollections.” Lord Morley.
“Life of Archbishop Temple.” Seven Friends.
“Life of Sir Frank Lockwood.” Augustine Birrell.
“Cecil John Rhodes.” Sir Thomas E. Fuller.
“Early and Late Work of Aubrey Beardsley.” H. C. Marrillier.
“Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley.” Rev. John Gray.
“Fifty-two Years in Fleet Street.” Sir John Robinson.
“Life of Lord Courtney.” G. P. Gooch.
“Life of an Irishman.” Justin McCarthy.
“Memoirs of Eight Parliaments.” Sir H. Lucy.
“Men and Manners in Parliament.” Sir H. Lucy.
“Portraits of Statesmen.” Justin McCarthy.
“Portraits of the Sixties.” Justin McCarthy.
“Portraits of the Seventies.” G. W. E. Russell.
“Portraits of the Eighties.” Horace G. Hutchinson.
“London Days.” Arthur Warren.
“Lord Russell of Killowen.” G. Barry O’Brien.
“Autobiography.” Herbert Spencer.
“Home Life with Herbert Spencer.”
“Lectures and Address.” Mandell Creighton.
“Mandell Creighton.” Louise Creighton.
“Letters of George Meredith.”
“George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to His
Work.” S. M. Ellis.
“Thomas Hardy.” Annie Macdonnell.
“Thomas Hardy.” Harold Child.
“Figures et Caractères.” Henri de Regnier.
“Oscar Wilde.” R. H. Sherrard.
“A Society Clown.” George Grossmith.
“Autobiography.” Richard Corney Grain.
“Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.” Bram Stoker.
“G. F. Watts.” G. K. Chesterton.
“Life, Letters, and Work of Frederick, Baron Leighton.” Mrs.
Russell Barrington.
“Life of Lord Randolph Churchill.” Winston Spencer Churchill.
“Autobiography.” H. M. Stanley.
“Darkest England.” William Booth.
“Lord Coleridge.” Ernest Hartley Coleridge.
“Bench and Bar.” J. A. Strahan.
Some of these portraits originally appeared in _The Outlook_.
INDEX
A
Alma-Tadema, Sir L., 248
Alverstone, Lord (Sir R. Webster), 274, 279 _et seq._
Ames, Julia, 179
Armistead, Mr. (afterwards Lord), 45
“Art for art’s sake,” 137 _et seq._, 250, 251
Ashmead-Bartlett, Sir E., 166
Asquith, H. H., 125, 165
Atbara, battle of, 69
Austin, Alfred, 295
B
Balfour, A. J., 122 _et seq._, 42, 47, 85, 89, 106, 170, 192, 246,
278, 291
Balfour, Jabez, 280
Barnato, Barney, 31, 34
Barttelot, Major, 236
Beardsley, Aubrey, 192 _et seq._, 249
Beit, Alfred, 34
Bennett, James Gordon, 232, 233
Benson, Archbishop, 94, 98, 99, 100
Besant, Sir W., 195
Bismarck, Prince Otto, 14, 60, 198
Blomfield, Sir A., 212
Boer War, 131 _et seq._, 172, 181
Booth, William, 264 _et seq._
Bottomley, H., 52
Bradlaugh, Charles, 16
Brampton, Lord (Sir H. Hawkins), 127, 282
Bright, John, 125, 183, 201, 210
Brighton Pavilion, 197
Browning, Robert, 258
C
Campbell, Rev. R. J., 156
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 28, 130, 171, 172, 191
Carlyle, Thomas, 177, 258
Chamberlain, Joseph, 122 _et seq._, 42, 69, 85, 108, 109, 168, 172
Chant, Mrs. Ormiston, 24
Chesterton, G. K., 93, 216, 217, 257
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 102 _et seq._, 41, 47, 123, 125, 172, 278
Collings, Jesse, 129
Cory, William, 19, 20
Courtney of Penwith, Lord, 200 _et seq._
Creighton, Bishop, 154 _et seq._
Creighton, Mrs., 160
Curzon, Marquis, 228
D
Darling, Sir Charles, 283
Delane, Thaddeus, 208, 290
Devonshire, Duke of, 83 _et seq._, 122, 222
Dickens, Charles, 251, 252
Disraeli, Benjamin, 45, 171
E
Edward VII, King, 90, 100, 150
Eliot, George, 120, 121
Emin Pasha, 231, 236
F
Fashoda, dispute between France and England, 70, 71
Finance Act (1894), 145
Fowler, Sir H. (Lord Wolverhampton,) 183 _et seq._
Frith, W. P., 248
Fukuzawa, Professor, 112
Fuller, Sir Thomas, 37
G
Galsworthy, J., 219
Gardiner, A. G., 216
Gladstone, W. E., 41 _et seq._, 14, 15, 20, 25, 26, 61, 65, 88, 89,
97, 109, 128, 129, 130, 135, 149, 150, 152, 169, 170, 185, 190,
203, 222, 224, 225, 245, 275, 278, 289, 310
Gooch, C. P., 205
Gordon, General, 33, 178, 317
Goschen, J., 105
Grain, Corney, 312, 313
Grantham, Sir W., 281, 284
Greenwood, Frederick, 211
Grossmith, George, 308, 313, 314
Groves, Mr. Justice, 283
H
_Hampshire_, loss of, 82
Haldane, Viscount, 238
Harcourt, Sir W., 145 _et seq._, 42, 130, 170, 190, 191
Hardie, Keir, 15, 148
Hardy, Thomas, 211 _et seq._
Hearn, Lafcadio, 175
Henley, W. E., 197
Herkomer, Sir H., 248
Home Rule, 25, 26, 27, 46, 47, 48, 65, 89, 130, 148, 152, 169, 221,
222, 226, 239 _et seq._
Huxley, Professor, 14, 44, 251, 261
I
Imperialism, Mr. Chamberlain and, 132
Irving, Sir H., 308 _et seq._
J
Jameson, Dr., 36, 37, 276, 280
Japan, influence of Herbert Spencer on, 111 _et seq._
Japan, war with China, 13
Jeune, Sir Francis, 282, 283
Jeyes, S. H., 294, 295
Jones, Kennedy, 303
K
“Kaffir Circus” Boom, 30
Kikuchi, Baron, 113
Kingsley, Charles, 97, 252
Kipling, Rudyard, 30, 192, 215
Kitchener, Lord, 69 _et seq._
Kruger, President, 131
L
Labouchere, Henry, 146
Lang, Andrew, 295
Leighton, Lord, 248 _et seq._
Livingstone, David (found by Stanley), 232, 236, 237
Lloyd George, David, 133
Lockwood, Sir Frank, 285 _et seq._
Lords, House of, 227
Low, Sir Sidney, 294, 295
M
McCarthy, Justin, 239 _et seq._
MacWhirter, J., 248
Mahdi, tomb desecrated, 70
Manning, Cardinal, 99
Marchand, Major, 70 _et seq._
Maupassant, Guy de, 195
Meredith, George, 50 _et seq._, 217
Mill, John Stuart, 15, 169, 171
Millais, J. E., 248, 255
Milner, Lord, 181, 224
Morley, John (now Viscount), 164 _et seq._, 26, 48, 54, 57, 111, 124,
129, 146, 149, 152, 177, 189, 190, 221, 224, 228
Moulton, Lord, 243
Mudford, William, 292, 293
N
Newcastle Programme, 48, 149
Nineties, general aspect of, 11 _et seq._
Northcliffe, Viscount, 280, 303 _et seq._
O
O’Connor, T. P., 296
Omdurman, battle of, 69, 74, 79
O’Shea divorce suit, 245
P
Papacy, History of, 158, 159
Parke, Ernest, 297
Parnell, C. S., 41, 123, 245, 272, 274
Perks, Sir R., 189
Pigott, Richard, 271 _et seq._
Q
Queen Victoria, 13, 39
R
Redmond, John, 245
Reid, Sir T. Wemyss, 305, 306
Rhodes, Cecil, 30 _et seq._, 179, 181, 182
Ritualism, 154, 162
Roberts, Earl, 79
Rosebery, Earl of, 19 _et seq._, 42, 85, 92, 123, 130, 147, 148, 152,
170, 171, 190, 306
Rossetti, D. G., 255
Ruskin, John, 248
Russell, G. W. E., 133
Russell of Killowen, Lord, 271 _et seq._, 283, 284
Russell, Rev. Matthew, 275
S
Salisbury, Marquis of, 60 _et seq._, 14, 41, 85, 100, 103, 279
Salvation Army, 264 _et seq._
Sargent, J. S., 248
Shaw, G. B., 195, 297
Smith, W. H., 123
Spencer, Earl, 221 _et seq._
Spencer, Herbert, 111 _et seq._, 258
Spender, J. A., 177, 306, 307
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 260 _et seq._
Stanley, Sir H. M., 230 _et seq._
Stevenson, R. L., 197
Synthetic philosophy, criticism of, 121
T
Temple, Archbishop, 93 _et seq._, 156
Tennyson, Lord, 52, 252, 253, 258
Terry, Miss Ellen, 308, 309
Thackeray, W. M., on journalism, 289, 290
Thorneycroft, Ellen (Lady Wolverhampton), 189
Toole, J. L., 308, 311, 312
Tory democracy, 106, 107
Toryism, changes in character of, 67, 68, 227
U
Uganda, addition to Empire, 13
V
Valera, de, “President,” 247
W
Waddy, S. D., Q.C., 286
Walkley, A. B., 297, 306
Watts, G. F., 248 _et seq._
Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney, 268
Wells, H. G., 214
Whiggism, affected by Home Rule, 226, 227
Whistler, J. McNeill, 248
Wilde, Lady, 140
Wilde, Oscar, 136 _et seq._, 155, 194
Williams, Lord Justice, 282
Winterbotham, A. B., 239
Wolseley, Lord, 236, 237
Wyndham, Charles, 308, 312
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury._
End of Project Gutenberg's Portraits of the Nineties, by E. T. Raymond