Back to the Lyceum.--The servant question.---My maid Lottie.--A
plea for life.--Child’s play.--“I know my place.”--An attempt at
consolation.--A cab accident and “dignity.”--“The Lyons Mail.”--A
wretched part.--Ellen Terry’s question.--Irving’s kindness.--Beerbohm
Tree and a benefit performance.--My father’s death.--An impersonation
of Ada Rehan.--A recital tour with Terriss.--Value for money.--A trip
to Monte Carlo.--Learning the game.--Mr. Alphonse de Rothschild.--The
benevolent croupier.--A new experience.--Terriss on the
telephone.--“Becket.”--A letter from Sir Squire Bancroft.--Rehearsals
for the American tour.--Journey to San Francisco.--Terriss takes
charge.--Irving’s anxiety.--The effect of surroundings.--A
triumphal progress.--Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss.--The stern
parent.--Margaret in “Faust.”--The happiest day of my life.
The year 1892 was yet another turning-point in my life, for in 1892
Irving insisted on my return to the Lyceum--and in 1892 I solved the
servant question for over twenty years.
I do not for one moment pose as being singular in my likes and
dislikes, but I admit to being profoundly affected by the people with
whom I am brought in daily contact; there are such things as natural
antipathies--utterly unreasonable, no doubt, and often perfectly
incomprehensible--and, fortunately, there are also people in the world,
in every station of life, whose natures are essentially sympathetic.
And in such a profession as mine the constant presence of a sympathetic
and soothing personality is a boon incalculable. Such a personality was
my faithful friend and maid, Lottie, who first came to me during my
season at the Lyceum and remained with me for over twenty years--until,
in fact, she was compelled to choose between a husband and me. Rightly,
the husband won, and Lottie deserved her happiness, while the husband
was a lucky man.
My first sight of Lottie was when I was told that “a person has called
about the place,” and, entering the drawing-room of my flat, I found a
thin little black-haired woman, ghastly pale, leaning against a chair,
breathing heavily and with difficulty.
“I’ve come about the place,” she panted.
“But you look as if you were going to faint!” I cried in alarm.
“Oh no, I’m not. It’s them stairs, and I’m just out of hospital.” By
this time the poor thing had recovered her breath, and was looking me
over with calmly reflective eyes. Then she looked round her.
“Yes,” she said, “I think the place will suit me. You’ll want my
references.”
And she gave me them--to a house in Park Lane, kept by an ex-butler and
his wife, where she had for long waited on Mrs. Jerome, the mother of
the late Lady Randolph Churchill.
So Lottie came to me, and for over twenty years from the time of
her coming she devoted her life to me, and in the shadow through
which I was soon to pass I had no firmer stay and comfort than that
dark-haired, resolute little woman.
I am afraid her first experience of her new mistress was rather trying,
but Lottie rose to any and every occasion, and she accepted the little
shock which greeted her on her very first day in her new place with
the calm philosophy which rarely, if ever, deserted her in all the
years to come.
At this time I had a flat in Shaftesbury Avenue, on the top floor, with
a turret looking over the Trocadero, and during my engagement at the
Lyceum Mr. Terriss was in the habit of calling to rehearse with me the
new parts in which I was to appear.
On the morning of Lottie’s arrival we were rehearsing the scene from
“Richelieu” in which Julie de Mortemar pleads with the Cardinal for the
life of De Mauprat.
As Julie, in a modern walking dress, I was kneeling at the feet
of Richelieu--Irving’s part being represented by Mr. Terriss in
tweeds--and was sobbing the lines: “Spare this man’s life! What
is one man’s life to you? To me, ’tis earth, ’tis heaven! ’Tis
_everything_!--Oh _spare_ his life!” when the door opened.
“Luncheon is served, miss,” announced the new maid, looking at us
curiously.
“Funny sort of place I’ve tumbled into,” she said to herself, and made
for the kitchen.
“You’ve been here longer than me, and I think you ought to be told,”
she announced to the cook, “there’s a strange man in the drawing-room
with Miss Millward, and she’s on her knees to him asking him to save
some man’s life, and, by the look of him, I don’t think he’s going to
do it. And she’s saying _one_ man’s life’s _nothing_ to him!”
After serving lunch she returned to the kitchen slightly reassured.
“I think he’ll do it,” she confided to the cook, “they’re chatting
quite friendly now.”
Lottie’s knowledge of the world of the theatre at that time was
precisely nil, and it took me quite a long time after Terriss had left
to explain to her exactly why I was on my knees to a stranger in my
drawing-room at that hour in the morning, making such startling appeals
to the stranger’s better feelings.
It was a great surprise to Lottie to find that her new mistress was an
actress. Like my gardener Haddon, she was calmly indifferent to the
world of the theatre; she grew to tolerate it, but in her heart of
hearts she never entirely approved of it.
And her attitude towards the different parts I played was entirely her
own.
Shortly after I had made a big success in America in that brilliant
comedy, “Lord and Lady Algy,” a visitor to my dressing-room, after
saying pretty things to me, turned to Lottie.
“You must be very proud of your lady,” she observed.
Lottie looked up from folding some dresses.
“What for, ma’am?” she asked coldly.
“For her great success in this piece.”
“This piece, indeed!” sniffed Lottie, with memories of strenuous
Adelphi and Drury Lane parts crowding her mind, parts which were so
physically exhausting that it was her nightly task to towel, massage
and sponge a panting, perspiring, and exhausted mistress with eau de
cologne; “this piece, indeed! Child’s play, ma’am; mere child’s play!”
During all the years she was with me, Lottie’s chief cares were for my
health, that I should be nicely dressed, and, above all, that I should
be “dignified,” as she put it, and Lottie’s ideas on the subject of
“dignity” were rigid in the extreme.
Shopping one hot afternoon in New York, after an interminable wait in
some “store”: “For goodness’ sake, Lottie, sit down,” I begged her.
“Thank you, Miss Jessie,” she replied coldly, “_I_ know my place.”
And never shall I forget when, at one rehearsal, after everything
possible seemed to have gone wrong, and I had displeased myself in
every possible way, on my return to my dressing-room I flung myself in
a chair and uttered a very small and not really very naughty word.
“_Damn!_” I exclaimed, with all my heart and soul.
“Miss Jessie,” said Lottie, icily, “if you say that word again I shall
have to get a piece of soap and wash your mouth out!”
But if Lottie could be harsh as the sternest nurse to the naughtiest
child if occasion required, she could also be very soothing, in her own
way.
On another evening, thoroughly dissatisfied with my dress and “make-up”:
“Oh, Lottie,” I cried in despair, “I wish I were really beautiful!”
“Never mind, Miss Jessie,” she replied, soothingly, glancing at the
array of “make-up” implements on the dressing-table. “You _do_ try your
best. You use everything, and no one can do more!”
At times, I fear, I was a big responsibility to Lottie, and her anxiety
over my “dignity” was touching.
While I was playing in New York we had a nasty cab accident on the
way to the theatre, in which, although both of us escaped without a
scratch, the poor coachman was badly hurt. It had been entirely the
fault of a tram driver, and when the coachman was at last released from
hospital I offered to appear as a witness for him in his action against
the tram company.
The company was a powerful “trust,” and was represented by a very
clever lawyer, who attempted to laugh the case out of court. As I
listened to his brutally humorous cross-examination of the injured man,
my indignation rose slowly to boiling point.
“Wait until I get into the witness box!” I hissed to Lottie. “I’ll let
that beast of a man know exactly what I think of him!”
On went the brutal cross-examination; and more and more nervous did the
poor injured man in the box get, more and more did my blood boil, and
more and more anxious did Lottie become.
At last my name was called.
I sprang to my feet, but Lottie grabbed my dress.
“Miss Jessie!” she whispered, as I struggled to tear myself loose.
“Miss Jessie! I want to speak to you!”
“What is it?”
“For goodness’ sake, Miss Jessie, let them _think_ you’re a lady, even
if you’re not!”
But whatever they thought, the poor man got his well deserved damages.
One of the very few parts I have played which I thoroughly detested was
that of Jeanette--the wife of Dubosc, in “The Lyons Mail”--and I was by
no means happy when Irving told me that he wished me to play it instead
of my former part of the young girl Julie, Miss Terry having also a
cordial dislike for Jeanette.
I struggled through somehow or other, loathing my own performance and
feeling very unhappy about it, and I did not feel any happier when
next day Miss Terry asked me at rehearsal: “And how do you like that
wretched part?”
“Not at all,” I told her promptly. “I feel horribly uncomfortable in
it.”
“So I rather gathered,” she laughed, “for Henry and I were talking
about your performance and he seemed tremendously amused with it. He
made me roar!”
I am sure Ellen Terry did not mean to be unkind, but to me it seemed
the very last straw, and I must have shown my perturbation, for no
sooner had she left me than Irving, who had been standing up the stage
and had evidently noticed our conversation, came to me.
“What was Miss Terry saying to you?” he asked, curiously.
“She--she told me that you had roared at my performance of Jeanette!” I
stammered, on the verge of tears.
His eyes twinkled.
“My dear,” he said, tapping my arm reassuringly, “you pleased _me_--and
that is enough.”
No more loyal creature ever breathed than Henry Irving.
Dominating, apparently cynical, as his personality may have seemed,
there was an ineffably tender side to his nature, a certain shy
sensitiveness which he only rarely revealed. During the whole of the
_matinée_ one Saturday afernoon I thought Irving was particularly
tender and kind to me; time and again he came to me as I stood waiting
in the wings, looking at me half-curiously, half-sadly, but only
murmuring commonplaces. When I reached my flat after the performance my
sister was waiting for me.
“Father is dead!” I cried. “Did he die at eleven last night?”
She nodded.
At that hour I had been talking of my father with my maid Lottie. I had
seen him the day before, when he had seemed as usual, but there was
ever the fear of another and a fatal stroke, and that night I had felt
quite suddenly that I ought to cable my brothers in New York.
I was not in the evening bill, and on his arrival at the theatre
Terriss went to Irving.
“Charlie Millward is dead,” he said.
“I knew it this morning,” replied Irving, “and I admired Jessie
Millward for her fortitude more than I can say. I tried hard several
times to tell her how much I sympathised with her, but somehow I could
not screw myself up to do it.”
“She didn’t know,” Terriss told him; “we all tried to keep it from her
until after the _matinée_.”
For the following Tuesday a big benefit had been arranged by Beerbohm
Tree and Terriss at the Haymarket for St. Mary’s Hospital, and Terriss
and I were announced to appear in a scene from “The Taming of the
Shrew.”
In the morning Tree came to Terriss.
“I suppose Miss Millward won’t appear?” he said. “Yes, she says she
will appear,” replied Terriss, “but only on condition that no one
speaks to her.”
Was it some curious comprehension of my nature that had restrained
Irving that afternoon?
So I played Katharine, and some of the critics said that, intentionally
or not, I had given a splendid impersonation of Ada Rehan in the part.
The impersonation was deliberate. I had never, and have never since,
seen a more superb performance of Katharine than that of Ada Rehan; to
me it has always been the “last word”; there has been nothing more to
say or do; with her the character of Shakespeare’s shrew seemed painted
for all time, and I even adopted the red velvet dress she wore. I could
never conceive of another reading or a more masterly performance than
Ada Rehan’s.
And it was the matron of the drama who once said to me complacently:
“My dear, actresses only come to the theatre to pick my brains,” ever
since which I have pleaded guilty to picking up anything, anywhere,
from anybody, which seemed artistically worthy of admiration and study.
So when on a costume recital tour which Mr. Terriss and I took about
this time he offered to teach me Adelaide Neilson’s rendering of
Juliet--to whom he had played Romeo--I was properly grateful, for
surely hers was the most nearly perfect Juliet in living memory.
That costume recital tour was great fun.
I remember we played the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet,” the
cottage scene from “The Lady of Lyons,” a scene from “The Hunchback,”
the quarrel scene from “The Taming of the Shrew,” and, in addition,
Mr. Terriss recited “Fra Giacomo,” and I, standing before a cloth
representing a country cottage, and wearing the traditional white
muslin and blue sash, gave the “boiled-down” version of “The May
Queen.” Shades of Tennyson!
And as if that were not enough, there were recitations of “The Faithful
Soul,” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” to say nothing of some
clever performances at the piano, à la George Grossmith senior, by Mr.
Pritchard, which gave us time to change.
Our audiences certainly received value for money, and the tour was very
profitable. We gave one performance in a different town each night, and
as our manager, Charles Abud, arranged for very short journeys, the
strain was not really so great.
But at one town--Buxton, I think--we made a fatal mistake.
The house was sold out, and the manager asked us to stay on and play
a _matinée_ the next afternoon. It was a foolish move, as there was no
time to advertise the performance, but Terriss consented.
While Terriss was “making up” an old friend came round and asked if he
might see the show.
“I don’t want a seat, old man,” he said. “I know you were crowded out
last night. Let me stand anywhere, and then come and have a little
dinner with me.”
“My dear old man,” said Terriss, “you can have as many seats as ever
you like. In fact, you can have the whole house.”
And he could have had the whole house, for, owing to shortness of
notice and lack of advertisement, the crowded audience of the night
before had dwindled to a few curious passers-by, who, noticing the hall
was open, had dropped in just to see what was going on.
So there is something in the power of advertisement.
Those costume recitals must have been profitable, for soon after the
close of the tour, with my old school friend Kate Morton I paid my
first visit to Monte Carlo.
I knew absolutely nothing about gambling, and everybody had warned me
not on any account to go near the tables, but it seemed absurd to stay
at Monte Carlo and not visit the Casino, so within three hours of our
arrival I was in the rooms, and in much less time I had, in some wholly
mysterious manner which I was absolutely unable to understand, lost
over thirty-five pounds.
The discovery gave me rather a shock. People all round me had money
pushed at them by the croupiers, but none seemed to come my way, and I
thought it high time to investigate the cause.
“I must learn this game before I play again,” I told Kate, and on the
way back to the hotel I bought a roulette wheel.
So for several mornings I set myself to “learn the game” in a stuffy
hotel room--the whole idea of the holiday had been that it was to be
spent in the fresh air--and still I lost!
Then I determined to play for half an hour a day before lunch only, and
if I still lost, to leave Monte Carlo for ever and go to Nice.
As I entered the Casino the morning of my stern decision, I rubbed
against Mr. Alphonse de Rothschild. It seemed a good omen, and I
managed to get a seat next to him, thinking he would be simply bound to
bring me luck. But his game was entirely beyond my poor comprehension.
Not having a mathematical brain, I was quite unable to follow it, so
I was thrown back on the little system I had invented all by myself
on the roulette wheel in my hotel bedroom, and the system, as far as
I remember it, consisted in having half a louis on seventeen, half a
louis on the column, and half on six dernier. To my gratified surprise,
the first coup came off, and so delighted was I that I passed half
a louis to the benevolent-looking croupier who had shovelled me my
winnings. I was rather astonished when he returned it in small change,
but: “Never mind,” I said to myself, “you deserve it. Whatever you are,
you are not grasping, and you shall have a nice tip when I leave off.”
My little system worked out admirably. Time after time the benevolent
croupier shovelled me my winnings, and time after time he returned the
half-louis I attempted to give him for his trouble.
At last an idea struck me--a horrible idea--which made me tingle all
over.
“Half a louis is not enough!” I told myself. “The regulation tip is a
louis; that’s why he won’t take it!”
Heavens, how mean I felt!
To think, after all his kindness, that I had been deliberately trying
to under-tip him!
So I played my final coup, gathered in my winnings--yes, I won
again!--and, rising hurriedly, bolted from the rooms leaving a whole
louis on the table for the benevolent croupier.
When I got back to the hotel I told the shameful story of my meanness
to a person of experience.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, in mock horror. “Of course you know that
you’ll never be allowed in the rooms again!”
“If they are as strict as all that, they ought to put up a notice about
the proper amount to tip!” I retorted. “How on earth was I to know that
a louis was the correct fee?”
And then he went on to explain gently that I had committed an
unheard-of offence, the penalty for which was expulsion, both for the
benevolent croupier and myself, the offence being bribery and the
receiving of a bribe!
Somehow or other, so accustomed had I grown on my first visit to Monte
Carlo to tipping the most respectable-looking people in the shape of
_maîtres d’hotel_, concierges and officials of every description, that
it had never occurred to me that a benevolent Casino croupier could
possibly be beyond the pale of tips.
I wonder what he did with that poor little louis when everybody had
gone, and it was lying there unaccounted for. And it must have lain
there, for I am sure Mr. Alphonse de Rothschild wouldn’t have picked it
up.
That holiday contained two new experiences for me: I paid my first
visit to the gaming table, and spoke for the first time on the
telephone.
And I don’t know which experience was the more exciting. When I reached
my hotel in Paris on the return journey I was told that I was “wanted
on the telephone.” I am afraid that such a message nowadays would
entirely fail to excite, but as I had never in my life used a telephone
I quivered with nervousness. A polite clerk told me exactly how to
use the terrible instrument, and assured me that there was not the
slightest danger of electrocution, so I gingerly lifted the receiver
to my ears, and felt the thrill of an inventor when I heard the voice
of Mr. Terriss, who was actually speaking from the Green Room Club in
far-off London.
His voice sounded faint and tired, and I told him so, with a laugh.
“You can laugh,” he replied with a sigh. “You’re in Paris, and can
enjoy yourself. I’m off to another rehearsal.”
“Becket” was on the eve of production, and of all the Lyceum rehearsals
those for “Becket” were, I was told, the most exhausting, for Irving,
in his anxiety to do the dead Laureate justice, spared neither himself
nor others.
I had expected to be in the cast, for Irving had insisted on my return
to the Lyceum, but for long he refused to tell me of his plans for
Tennyson’s play, and at last the mystery was solved when he informed me
that Miss Ward was to play opposite to Miss Terry, and that I was to
understudy Miss Ward and to play the part on the American tour. And, as
a tiny matter of stage history, I also played the part at the Lyceum
during Miss Ward’s absence from the cast owing to the death of her
mother.
The opening night of “Becket” was an event, even in the story of the
Lyceum, and I returned to my flat with my mind full of the wonderful
performance of Irving--in my opinion, his Becket and his Hamlet were
his two greatest parts, and were unsurpassable--and of the vision of
Terriss, who had never played more nobly, and who looked superb in the
gorgeous dresses of the king. His voice was still ringing in my ears
and his regal figure was still in my mind’s eye when I returned to my
flat next morning after a walk, for he had arranged to call for me to
take me out to lunch.
There was no one in the drawing-room.
“Has Mr. Terriss called?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Lottie; “he’s on the roof cleaning out the drains.”
And at that moment the door opened, and, instead of the stately
embodiment of Henry of England, a tousled and rather disreputable
figure in old tweeds entered.
“Lottie told me your gutters were choked,” said the figure, “so I’ve
been up on the roof cleaning them out. Can I have a wash before we go
to lunch?”
Many a romance would have been spoilt by the sharp contrast between the
figure of the night’s illusion and the morning’s reality! One hardly
pictures a young, golden-voiced Apollo cleaning out gutters.
There was no false romance, no false sentiment about Terriss. The
key-note to his character was plain, matter-of-fact determination, and
determination and hard work were his prevailing characteristics to the
end.
In a letter he wrote me while this budget of memories was being put
together, Sir Squire Bancroft reminded me of his first interview with
Terriss. On returning from a walk to their house in Circus Road, their
maid told Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft that a young gentleman, who had called
before, had pushed past her and installed himself in the drawing-room
to await their return. On being interviewed, he calmly announced that
he was resolved not to leave the house until he had an engagement, and
so amused and amazed was Sir Squire with his courage and cool but quite
polite perseverance, that when he left the house he was engaged to play
a small part in a revival of Tom Robertson’s “Society.”
By the way it was, curiously enough, in connection with this very play
of “Society” that Lady Bancroft first met Robertson, who had previously
met her husband at my father’s house.
“I first met Robertson at a supper party given by your father and
mother,” wrote Sir Squire, in the letter I am quoting, “but he was
introduced to my wife by H. J. Byron, when he and Mrs. Byron lived in
Doughty Street, with a view to reading ‘Society.’”
In spite of the success of “Becket,” rehearsals continued at the Lyceum
throughout its run, in preparation for the fourth American tour, and,
as I have said, there was nothing perfunctory about Lyceum rehearsals.
At that time, whatever the play might be at night, the American
repertoire was rehearsed by day, and the gospel of work was constantly
preached to me both by Irving and by Terriss--two widely different
personalities, who agreed, however, in this one particular.
One had little time for amusement and social engagements, and I was
reminded of Terriss’s appearance in my flat in his “working clothes”
when one afternoon, after a long and tiring rehearsal, I met Irving in
Leicester Square.
He stopped me, and chatted for a few moments, and I thought I saw a
merry twinkle in his eye.
As I have said, I always stood a little in awe of Irving off the stage,
so I felt quite embarrassed when as he bade me good-bye he observed:
“You are looking very charming, my dear.”
“I don’t feel it, Mr. Irving,” I replied, nervously. “I feel tired out.”
“Very charming,” he repeated, with the twinkle more pronounced than
ever. “Look at yourself in the first glass you come to.”
So, at the first glass I came to, I sought to discover the charm which
had appealed to Irving’s sense of humour, and I discovered it--in the
shape of three long dirty streaks down the whole of one side of my face.
The London season came to an end, and in the autumn of 1893 the Lyceum
Company sailed from Southampton on what was for Irving his fourth,
and for me my second, American tour. In many ways, from the sordid
point of view of comfort, this tour possessed many advantages over
the first one. Even Irving, whom nothing seemed to tire, who seemed
to require no sleep and who thrived on work, had, on our first visit,
begun to complain of the eternal journeying--the jumping from Brooklyn
to Chicago, from Chicago to Boston, which had been rendered necessary
by the relinquishment of the one-night places originally planned. Each
succeeding tour had brought about an improvement in the travelling
arrangements, and by the time the fourth tour was arranged the plan of
campaign had almost reached perfection. It was, as an expert touring
manager observed, the most complete and easiest tour that had ever been
mapped out.
In the first place it began at San Francisco.
Irving, Miss Terry and the Lovedays went off in advance for a short
holiday in Canada, and the company sailed from Southampton on the
19th August, nominally under the parental care of Bram Stoker, but in
reality Mr. Terriss very soon took charge of the expedition.
The first excitement of the tour occurred in New York. A certain member
of the company, unused to the autocratic methods of the policemen of a
democratic country, dared to argue with a New York “cop”; from argument
he was rash enough to proceed to strong words, and the policeman,
quite unused to free speech from a mere member of the public, promptly
arrested him. So the start was delayed while Terriss and Stoker
extricated the victim from the toils of democratic tyranny, and
pacified the offended autocrats with abject apologies on behalf of the
offender, and promises to behave respectfully in future.
The delay worried poor Stoker, but there was worse in store for him.
Five days on end cooped up in even a comfortable American train was
a disagreeable novelty to most of us, and soon became insupportable
to Terriss, whose love of exercise and fresh air almost amounted to a
mania. And he had the company with him, when against Stoker’s formal
wishes--yet, I am sure, in accordance with Stoker’s secret desires--he
took to having the special stopped at little wayside stations, at which
the “fresh-air fiends” used to get out and go for brisk walks, while
the train officials chewed gum and swapped drinks and stories with the
natives.
At one such little wayside station a quaint little incident took place.
No sooner had the train stopped, with its usual howl and shriek of
whistles and brakes, than two miners appeared on the scene, and seeking
out Terriss, told him that they had been waiting for the train, as,
being English, they wanted to welcome fellow countrymen to their
village.
“And, Mr. Terriss,” said one of them, “perhaps you don’t know that this
place is as good as named after you.”
Which indeed it was, being Terrasse.
The speaker’s apparent familiarity with his face and name amused
Terriss, who asked if they had ever met in the old country.
“I can’t say that we ever exactly _met_,” said the man, with a smile,
“but do you remember once playing in “Hamlet” with Mr. Irving in
Edinburgh, when a lime-lightman fell from the flies on to the stage?”
“Yes,” replied Terriss.
“Well, I was that man, so, in a sense, we’ve appeared on the stage
together!”
The various stops for exercise and conversation with the inhabitants
took up time, and when we at last arrived at Cheyenne, a station at
the foot of the Rockies, Bram Stoker became almost hysterical when
he informed Terriss that we were no less than twelve hours behind
time--with the Rocky Mountains still to climb.
There was only one thing to be done, and Terriss did it.
“Fearing that we should be late for our evening performance,” he wrote
to a friend, describing our adventures, “I thought our only chance
was to try an application of the almighty dollar. I did this to the
driver in the shape of a ten-dollar bill, asking at the same time to
be allowed to ride on the engine. The result was that we ascended and
descended the Rockies at a far greater speed than had ever before been
attained, and when it became known that the increased oscillation, as
we sped through the rugged defiles, across the slender bridges that
spanned the yawning ravines and through the snowsheds, was due to the
erratic driving of a Thespian, prayers were offered up for the safe
arrival of the troupe at San Francisco.”
So far as I remember, the climb was not so bad, even if the constant
“puff-puff-puff” of the labouring engine got on one’s nerves; it was
after we had paused for a moment to take in water at a spot where a
noticeboard proclaimed “This is the Summit of the Rockies” that the
long descent--and the fun--really began. At times the train seemed
to leap like a thing possessed, and no one seemed surprised when one
dear old member of the company was found lying prone on his “tummy,”
with his eyes tightly shut, loudly praying for “those in peril on deep
waters,” so much had the oscillation upset him.
But in spite of all we were many hours late, and the only time I ever
saw Irving really excited was when he met us on our arrival late on the
Sunday evening. And his excitement was easy to understand for we were
to open in a few hours’ time to a house which had long been sold out
at the highest prices ever known in the City of the Golden Gate, even
Patti’s colossal figures being eclipsed.
The first part in which I appeared in San Francisco was that of Queen
Eleanor in “Becket,” and, to my horror, as the play proceeded I found
that I simply could not act.
It was not that I was acting badly; I was not acting at all, and
after one of my scenes I was not surprised when Irving came to me
and reprimanded me for slackness. But it was not slackness; try as I
would, I seemed to become worse; it was not merely bad acting, it was
not acting at all. Pace, “attack,” intonation--everything was wrong,
horribly wrong, and I felt desperate. So after the big “mob scene” I
sought Irving out in my turn.
“I don’t know what is the matter with me,” I blurted desperately. “I’m
not acting at all.”
“No,” he replied sardonically, and no one could blame him, for it was
the first performance of the dead Laureate’s play in San Francisco,
and it was Irving’s pride that Tennyson’s fame should be honoured in
America.
There was an awkward pause, while I wondered vainly if I could possibly
be ill without knowing it, and Irving stood waiting politely, if
ironically, for some sort of explanation.
At last: “I wonder if it is my dressing-room that is depressing me,” I
exclaimed.
Irving looked up.
“What is it like?” he asked quickly.
“Like a cell,” I told him; “four bare stone walls, with no window, and
a bare stone floor.”
“Show it to me,” he said at once.
I took him down, and he stood in the doorway in his Archbishop’s robes,
darting quick glances round the miserable den.
“Of course--of course,” he nodded. “How can you get the atmosphere of a
queen coming from a hole like this?”
When I came down to the theatre next day I found the bare walls covered
with tapestries, and the gloomy cell transformed with lights and
flowers.
And it was as Queen Eleanor in the Laureate’s play that I had the
honour of speaking the first words on the stage of the new Abbey’s
Theatre, now called The Knickerbocker, in New York, and never shall I
forget the roar of assent which greeted the question:
“Dost love this Becket?”
How the American public loved him!
Once again an Irving tour had been a triumphal progress; statesmen,
artists, lawyers, great commercial magnates, members of every class and
every rank in life had vied in paying tribute to the great actor and
his art. The farewells were almost hysterical in their fervour, and my
most abiding memories of the concluding scenes of that visit are of
vast, waiting, cheering crowds, which turned what was a theatrical tour
into a royal progress.
It was at Chicago that I saw Mr. Terriss in a new rôle, that of the
“heavy father.” It did not suit him in the least, and he soon abandoned
it.
Just before the performance of “The Merchant of Venice” I was handed a
cable from Dr. Lewin which contained the news of Ellaline’s marriage to
Seymour Hicks, and asked me to break the news to her father. Thoroughly
imbued with the Lyceum tradition, I was terribly afraid lest someone
should break the news to him before the performance was over, but no
one did, and when the curtain fell I handed him the cable.
It was at first rather a shock to him, as Ella had been left in charge
of the house in Bedford Park, and, on bidding her father good-bye, she
had flung her arms round him vowing that she would never, never marry
anyone--a very rash vow for a beautiful girl such as Ella.
But for quite ten minutes Mr. Terriss was the stern parent of tradition.
“Outrageous--unkind--disrespectful to me--inconsiderate!” he stormed.
“I’ll never speak to her again! Never!”
“Don’t be absurd!” I cried.
For a moment I was really frightened, but some weeks later, when our
train at last steamed slowly into Euston, Terriss, catching a glimpse
of Ella waiting on the arrival platform, was out of the carriage before
the train stopped, and father and daughter rushed into one another’s
arms.
And that was the “last act” of the “stern parent.”
During one of the last performances in America, Irving called me aside
and told me that he wished me to play Margaret in the revival of
“Faust” with which he was to reopen the Lyceum.
“Miss Terry will play for the first week,” he said, “but she needs a
rest, and when she goes I want you to play the part.”
As a matter of fact, as she tells in her reminiscences, Miss Terry was
already tiring of the part of the young girl, but as for me, I could
hardly believe my ears when I heard the news. I thought at first that
it must be a joke, that it could not be possibly true; but it was true,
and the day that I played Margaret to the Mephistopheles of Henry
Irving and the Faust of Terriss was positively the happiest day of my
life on the stage.
Yet on that day I realized for the first and only time in my life what
it is to have stage fright, to say nothing of giving Irving a severe
shock.
Although my name had been advertised for some time, when I made my
first appearance I felt acutely conscious of a murmur of disappointment
that I was not Ellen Terry, and for the moment it completely upset me.
Therefore, when Faust made his request:
“Pretty lady, will you walk with me?”
I replied in the words of Margaret:
“Sir, I am not pretty, nor yet a lady; I have no need of any escort
home,” and walked straight off the stage without finishing the scene,
with Irving watching me and wondering what on earth I was likely to do
next. However, I soon recovered, and the jewel scene passed off without
a hitch.
Having given Irving one shock, he was to give me another.
As Margaret knelt praying in the Cathedral scene, a bony finger gave
her two or three severe prods, and a well-known voice muttered, _sotto
voce_:
“Louder!--louder! More agony!--more agony!”
And at each prod Margaret’s voice soared in the desired agony.
I played Margaret on that never-to-be-forgotten day at the _matinée_
and at the evening performance, and when the curtain fell at night
Irving turned to me smiling:
“Like to play it all over again?” he asked
“I should!” I cried.
“I really believe you would,” he chuckled.
I have often been asked what has been my favourite character, and my
answer has always been Margaret in “Faust,” at the Lyceum, but the
Mephistopheles was Henry Irving, and the Faust was William Terriss.