The New York season.--“My Lady’s Lord.”--“Mrs. Dane’s
Defence.”--My protest.--Charles Frohman gets his way.--When I
come to my own.--Clement Scott.--Cheerful and comforting!--My
favourite hobby.--Henry Arthur Jones.--“Diplomacy.”--“Marie
Bancroft’s part is the best.”--Madame Sarah Bernhardt.--Why
she never learnt English.--She makes herself understood.--The
divine Sarah and the reporter.--A clairvoyant’s prophecy.--Its
fulfilment.--Leo Dietrichstein.--True French blood.--A full-fledged
star.--Impudence.--A new departure.--American “vaudeville.”--Sir
Charles Hawtrey.--Sir Herbert Tree breaks the English ice.--Call-boy
etiquette.--“A Queen’s Messenger.”--Acrobats as admirers.--Miss
Marie Lloyd.--A “movie” defiance of convention.--“The School for
Husbands.”--Home.--Death of Sir Henry Irving.
After a short holiday at home I returned to New York in the autumn, and
with the Empire Stock Company opened at Power’s Theatre, Chicago, with
“Lord and Lady Algy,” touring the big cities and drawing nearer and
nearer to New York as the time approached for the commencement of the
usual New York season, which lasted from December to May.
The first play of the season was “My Lady’s Lord,” by Harry Esmond,
who crossed the Atlantic to supervise the production. In “My Lady’s
Lord” I created the part of Lady Doura, but the play did not achieve
the success it deserved, and was followed by “Mrs. Dane’s Defence,” by
Henry Arthur Jones.
Better accustomed as I was by this time to Charles Frohman’s methods I
was rather surprised to find myself cast for the part of Lady Eastney,
and suggested mildly that the anguished Mrs. Dane was more after the
parts in which I was known at home.
“See here,” he said, “Miss Mary Moore is Charles Wyndham’s leading
lady, and she played Lady Eastney. The part was good enough for her.”
“It’s not a question of the part being good enough,” I protested, “it
is whether I am suited to it.”
“And besides,” he went on, cutting me short, “we want you in comedy
over here.”
Of course I yielded. Charles Frohman usually got his way, but I could
not resist one little comment.
“I wonder,” I said, “what my real line of business is. On the other
side of the Atlantic I am called an emotional actress, and I’m told
there that the public insist on seeing me in emotional parts. Here I am
a comedienne, and you tell me that the American public insist on seeing
me in comedy. Where do I come to my own?”
“Possibly in the middle of the Atlantic!” he laughed.
While I had begun to have immense confidence in Frohman’s judgment I
still had occasional qualms as to my fitness for my new rôle, and I was
not reassured in the least when shortly before Mr. Jones’s play was put
into rehearsal I met Clement Scott, who was on a visit to New York.
“Well, Jessie,” was his greeting, “Jones has written a great play, and
I’m glad that you are to have your chance as Mrs. Dane.”
“But I’m to play Lady Eastney,” I told him.
He stared at me in very unflattering surprise.
“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t pay sixpence to see you in comedy!”
Cheerful and comforting, was it not?
But Frohman was a better judge of the American public and of my
little abilities than Scott, and the Lady Eastney of the American
production pleased the big American public and had heaps and heaps
of nice things said about her, for which she was intensely grateful.
It is always pleasant to have nice things said about one, and I have
sometimes thought that if I were suddenly asked my favourite hobby, I
might, in an unguarded moment, reply quite truthfully: “Listening-in to
compliments.” But they must be real compliments, not make-believe ones.
It was through acting in “Mrs. Dane’s Defence” that I first met its
brilliant author, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, and for that reason alone I
look back on my appearance as Lady Eastney with pride and affection.
In my humble opinion, “Mrs. Dane’s Defence” is a very great play
indeed, and its production forms one of the landmarks of the modern
stage. At the time it provoked much discussion, and more than once it
was asked whether the author was using the Sir Daniel Cartwright or the
Lady Eastney to express his own opinions.
In a hitherto unpublished letter, written in 1901, which is before me
as I write, and which I have his permission to quote, Mr. Jones says:
“In reply to your question as to whether I am speaking through Lady
Eastney’s lips or through Sir Daniel Cartwright’s lips in the last
act of ‘Mrs. Dane’s Defence,’ my answer is that my own opinions have
nothing to do with the matter. I have merely given, I hope, fair
expression and fair play to the two opposite sides of the question,
the man’s and the woman’s. It is obvious that these two points of view
must always be more or less opposed to each other. It is, of course,
also obvious, as you say, that ‘Convention must win almost invariably
in the end’; but this is only because all the great laws that govern
human conduct are necessarily highly conventional. The sixth, seventh,
and eighth commandments are highly conventional rules of conduct; to
go against them does not so much imply unconventional behaviour as
unsound morality. With regard to the ending of the play, I wished
that the final impression should be one of calm and hope, and not of
despair. I think it is bad art to leave the audience disturbed and
distressed at the final fall of the curtain.--With sincere regards,
faithfully yours, HENRY ARTHUR JONES.”
The New York season was to conclude with an all-star production of
“Diplomacy,” and with a twinkle in his eye Charles Frohman asked me
which part I would play--Dora, created in London by Mrs. Kendal, or the
Countess Zicka, created by Lady Bancroft.
“Marie Bancroft’s part is the best,” he said.
I read the play, and for once I agreed with him and immediately chose
the part of Zicka, although I knew that I was undertaking no light
task, for in America that splendid actress Rose Coghlan had for
years been identified with the part, and any fresh interpreter would
naturally lay herself open to severe criticism and comparison.
[Illustration: JESSIE MILLWARD AS LADY EASTNEY IN “MRS. DANE’S
DEFENCE.”]
A week before my appearance I was at a reception given by Miss Marbury
and Miss Elsie de Wolff at their charming house in Irving Place, and
there I met Madame Sarah Bernhardt. Ever since--many years before--I
had seen her as Camille, I had worshipped the great French artist,
for her performance as Camille first opened my eyes to the wonderful
possibility of sinking oneself into a character and entirely losing
one’s own identity. Camille had lived before me, and Bernhardt had
lived and suffered as Camille. Later, three times in one week I went to
see her as La Tosca during one of our vacations at the Adelphi, and I
would return home exhausted myself after that wonderful torture scene.
She was, of course a frequent visitor at the Lyceum, and often and
often would I gaze furtively at her box from the stage and marvel at
her.
Therefore I was nervously flattered and excited when I found that she
remembered me and asked to meet me. We chatted for a time through an
interpreter, and she reminded me of many of the parts I had played at
the Lyceum. Then she said that she had heard that I was to play in
“Diplomacy,” and asked what part I had selected. I told her that I had
chosen the part of Zicka.
“Wise girl,” she said, nodding her head; “that is the part.”
And then I summoned up courage and asked her why she, who could do
nearly everything, and had such multitudes of admirers in England and
America, had never learnt English.
She laughed.
“Madame has never had the time,” explained the interpreter.
Wonderful Sarah Bernhardt!
When a critic on a New York paper hinted delicately that her frizzy
hair was false and that her teeth were too good to be her own, she
called on him, and letting down her hair before him:
“Pull eet!” she exclaimed. “Is eet real or not?”
And then, taking his finger, she bit it.
“Are zey false?” she demanded.
At all events the great Sarah knew enough English to make herself
understood. But another descriptive reporter, I fancy, drew on his
imagination when he wrote that with some difficulty he had penetrated
the great tragedienne’s hotel sitting-room to make enquiries as to her
future arrangements, and had asked, among other things, whether she
intended visiting all the States.
“Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Minneapolis,
sure--but nix on the punk towns,” was the reply that the divine Sarah
was reported to have given.
The American reporter is a splendid fellow, but his bump of veneration
is--to put it mildly--not overdeveloped, as a little cutting from a
criticism of a vaudeville performance which I have preserved will show:
“At the ---- Theatre this week are Hiram Van ---- and his chorus bevy
of Beef Trust Beauties. Hiram’s own figure don’t leave much room for
scenery while he is on the stage.”
Nor was the divine Sarah by any means the only theatrical victim of the
amusing, resourceful American reporter about this time, for not very
long after the Bernhardt incident Mrs. Langtry, then Lady de Bathe,
paid a visit of inspection to her ranches at Los Angeles, and became
the subject of a “scoop.”
Very quietly did a famous journalistic “hustler,” whose smiling boast
it was that he could travel anywhere on his gold teeth, follow her
on her travels, and at last he overtook her at a level crossing.
Cheerfully pulling off his hat he was about to introduce himself and
ask for a “story” when the Jersey Lily touched his arm and said: “For
goodness’ sake, stand further back! There’s a train coming!”
It was enough.
And a few hours later all New York was staring at the flaming bills:
LADY DE BATHE SAVES PRESSMAN’S LIFE!!!
“Diplomacy” was a great success, and Miss Margaret Anglin’s performance
of Dora, which followed immediately on her triumph as Mrs. Dane,
proclaimed her one of America’s greatest actresses.
At the end of the New York season I once again returned to England,
and, with Arthur Collins, secured the English rights of Marion
Crawford’s play, “In the Palace of the King,” and Clyde Fitch’s “The
Climbers,” both of which had been big successes in the States. During
this holiday I made up my mind to remain in England, but it was not
to be, and my next visit to America was attended by some curious
circumstances. One afternoon two girl friends who were lunching with me
announced that they were on their way to visit a clairvoyant.
“Do come with us,” one of them pleaded, “it’s awfully exciting, and she
tells you the most extraordinary things.”
“Rubbish,” I said, “you neither believe anything of the kind!”
However, they persuaded me to accompany them to a house in North
Kensington, where I sat in a sort of waiting-room while my friends had
their interviews. Each came back looking slightly bewildered, declaring
that it was very astonishing, and then I was persuaded to take my turn.
I entered the mystic chamber and soon found myself seated opposite a
little, dark woman, who sat huddled over a crystal, into which she
peered. At last:
“I see a star over your head,” she said, in a curiously monotonous
tone, “and you have crossed the water, and are in a city with very
high buildings. I see a little, round, fat man at a table. He is
smoking a huge cigar, and he suffers much from pains in his head. He
is surrounded with manuscripts, and he wants you to help him, and if
you do not he will not use them. You will get a telegram from him,
possibly at midday, and when you see him he will first apologize for
not writing, but he writes so badly.”
After this, and some more which didn’t particularly impress me, and
which I do not remember, I rejoined my two friends, who seemed to
expect that I ought to be extremely enthusiastic.
“It’s utter rubbish,” I told them. “From what I could make out she said
I am going back to New York, and I haven’t the faintest intention of
doing so.”
That, I remember, happened on a Friday, and I had dismissed the matter
from my mind when on the following Tuesday at midday I received a
telegram from Charles Frohman asking me if I could possibly see him at
two o’clock that afternoon at the Carlton.
I called, and when I was shown into his room, in spite of myself I
started.
Sure enough, here was the little, round, fat man, smoking the huge
cigar, and continually mopping his head--poor man, he suffered agonies
at times--and, strangely enough, his first words were an apology for
his abrupt telegram.
I sat opposite him.
“One moment, Mr. Frohman,” I said, as he was about to speak. “You want
me to come back to the States, and you have a play, and if I don’t play
in it you won’t take it!”
He looked up in astonishment.
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Never mind,” I replied. “Then it _is_ true?”
“Certainly it’s true, but I haven’t mentioned it to a soul. I’ve got
an option on the new play which is to be produced at the Haymarket
Theatre, an adaptation of “The Ladies’ Battle,” called “There’s Many a
Slip,” and if you don’t take the part Miss Ada Rehan wants the play and
I shall let her have it.”
“Very well, Mr. Frohman,” I said, “I’ll play it.”
“Good,” said he, and I could see that he was very much surprised at my
quick acquiescence, especially as I knew nothing of the part. And then
we talked about the play.
I rose to go, and as I was leaving I turned to him:
“I suppose you will laugh at me, but I got all this information from a
clairvoyant.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said. “I’m the winner.”
It seemed a pity that the clairvoyant did not see a little more, for
the play was not a big success. I was on the Atlantic when it was
produced at the Haymarket with Miss Winifred Emery in the part I played
in America, and apart from its psychic associations its chief claim to
my remembrance is that in it I was first associated with that brilliant
author and actor Leo Dietrichstein, whose “Great Lover” is a recent
success.
If not exactly a clairvoyant, Leo Dietrichstein prided himself on his
powers of intuition.
I was lunching with him and his wife one day when he observed, à propos
nothing:
“Miss Millward, I feel sure you are of French origin.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You have so many little actions and ways which remind me of a French
actress.”
Of course I felt very flattered.
“Well,” I admitted, “I _am_ of French origin.”
“What did I tell you?” he cried triumphantly, turning to his wife, and
then, to me: “Again and again I’ve told my wife that I was certain you
had French blood in your veins. I felt it, and I knew I could not be
mistaken. I never am when I feel like that.”
“You weren’t,” I assured him solemnly, “my mother was a Miss French--of
Cheltenham.”
Which merely goes to prove that some intuitions, while perfectly
correct, are occasionally ambiguous.
At the end of “There’s Many a Slip” I was “lent” by Charles Frohman to
Henry Miller, the distinguished father of Gilbert Miller, a fine actor
and a brilliant manager. Henry Miller was an Englishman, and later, in
1909, appeared at the Adelphi in his famous American success “The Great
Divide.” I was “lent” to create the part of Helen in Richard Harding
Davis’s play, “The Passing of Helen,” and I thoroughly enjoyed my
association with Mr. Miller. I had previously been warned that, though
a delightful and clever man, he had a notably violent temper, but all I
can say is that I never saw it, though on one or two occasions he would
have been perfectly justified in showing it.
Returning to New York I appeared as a full-fledged “star,” which meant
seeing in huge electric letters over the theatre the name: “Jessie
Millward”--at first a somewhat embarrassing but a very pleasant
experience. Once again I created in America a part created in England
by Miss Compton, Mrs. Tracey Auberton in Claud Carton’s “A Clean
Slate,” and then, greatly daring, I played Beatrice in “Much Ado about
Nothing” during a special engagement with the Century Players.
[Illustration: JESSIE MILLWARD AS BEATRICE]
William Winter, Irving’s old friend, wrote a very flattering criticism
of my performance, adding that while, of course, Ellen Terry was the
ideal Beatrice, my reading of the part came near to hers.
And so it ought to have done, for not only had I played Hero to her
Beatrice for some hundreds of times, but I had also understudied her,
and, with my usual habit of picking all brains worth picking (in
remembrance of that conversation with the matron of the drama), I
considered that I had given almost an imitation of the divine Ellen.
It was very impudent, of course, and I should never have dared to have
done it at home, any more than I should have dared to play Beatrice,
but just as I have always considered Ada Rehan’s Katharine the only
possible and perfect one, so do I regard Ellen Terry’s Beatrice. To
those who remember it in its perfection there can be no other.
About this time, to my surprise, I was continually receiving offers
from managers to appear on the music-halls, or, as the Americans put
it, “in vaudeville,” in any one-act play I chose, the stipulation
being that the play was only to last twenty minutes. Offer after offer
I declined, for in those not very far-off days the line between the
so-called legitimate and illegitimate stage was still very sharply
drawn, and I am afraid that we who called ourselves legitimate artists
were apt to look down upon the music-hall as the abode of performing
animals and red-nosed singers.
One afternoon in New York the telephone bell in my hotel sitting-room
rang, and after listening to the message I replied “No!” very curtly,
and then, turning to my guest, a well-known American lawyer:
“These music-hall people are eternally pestering me,” I said. “Some
people called Keith and Procter have just rung up and asked me if I
would appear at their Fifth Avenue Theatre. It’s too absurd to consider
for a single moment.”
“What sort of terms did they offer you?” he asked curiously.
“The terms are as absurd as the idea,” I replied, and told him the sum,
the size of which appalled him.
“Good heavens!” he cried, “I’d do anything for that--short of murder!
Why on earth don’t you accept it?”
And then he went on to explain the changing outlook in America on
vaudeville, the desire of the big vaudeville managers for a change in
the class of performance, and wound up by telling me of the beauty and
comfort of Keith and Procter’s theatre.
So impressed was I that I rang up Keith and Procter, told them that I
had changed my mind and that I would accept their offer. A little later
my ’phone rang again, and I found that the speaker was none other than
the present Sir Charles Hawtrey, who was over in New York on a visit.
“I hear that you are going to appear in vaudeville,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, and told him of my offer.
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve also just had an offer.”
“Then you play the first week, and I’ll play the second,” I suggested,
and so it was arranged.
As I have said, in those days it was an innovation for a legitimate
actor or actress to play on the music-hall stage, and I believe that
Sir Charles Hawtrey and I were almost the first to do so in America.
It was not for some years afterwards that in London the _cachet_ was
finally given to the halls, and the tradition broken once and for all,
by the appearance of Sir Herbert Tree at the Palace Theatre in 1912
in Kipling’s “Man Who Was,” although by 1912 nearly every prominent
American actor or actress had appeared in vaudeville at one time or
another.
And in English theatrical circles Sir Herbert’s invasion of the “halls”
created quite a mild sensation, and many were the stories told.
On the evening of his first performance the folk behind the scenes
were, it was said, very perturbed as to the exact mode of address
to adopt towards the great actor, and grew more and more nervous as
the time for his turn approached, and stories of Sir Herbert’s vague
notions of time recurred to them. In vaudeville, with its constant
succession of turns, “time is of the essence of the contract,” and as
the minutes drew slowly on, and there were no signs of the “star,” the
world behind the stage became very nervous and highly-strung. At last a
resourceful call-boy saved the situation.
Dashing round to the “star’s” dressing-room he banged loudly on the
door.
“’Urry up, ’Erbert!” he bawled. “Woodward’s seals is nearly through!”
For my first appearance I chose a one-act play, “A Queen’s Messenger,”
by Hartley Manners, the clever author of “Peg o’ My Heart,” played in
England by Miss Granville and Mr. Aubrey Smith, and terribly nervous
and anxious I was when the curtain rose on my first turn. Fortunately
all went well, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, seeing very little,
if any difference between the music-hall audience and the audience
to which I had so long been accustomed. One thing that particularly
struck me was the clever arrangement of the vaudeville programmes; not
only did the different items never clash, but each turn was introduced
in a suitable atmosphere. For example, to get the atmosphere of “The
Queen’s Messenger” the little play was always preceded by a serious and
very fine singer.
During this engagement I appeared twice daily--at three-forty in the
afternoon and at nine-forty in the evening--and before and after my
performance I was always wildly interested in the other items in the
programme, and used to send my maid Lottie down to find out and to
report to me what was going on on the stage.
One afternoon she came back to the dressing-room with pursed lips and a
frown of disapproval.
“What turn is on?” I asked her.
“Some--some acrobats, Miss Jessie,” she sniffed.
“I love acrobats,” I cried excitedly, “I’ll run down and watch them
from the wings.”
She made to stop me.
“I don’t think you’d like these acrobats, Miss Jessie. They’re not at
all--_nice_.”
“How many are there?”
“Oh, a lot.”
“What are they, men or women?”
“All sorts,” she replied, primly.
“What ages?”
“All ages.”
By this time my curiosity was fairly aroused.
“Well, I’ll go and see for myself,” I answered, and pushing past her
went to the wings, to find that the “acrobats” were a troupe of monkeys
dressed as Chinese laundrymen. For a little time I stood at the side
of the stage much amused, and then I noticed that something seemed to
have gone wrong with the laundry business. I could hear an invisible
trainer expostulating with his “artists,” and then I noticed that all
the “artists” were gazing in my direction, and the “star,” a huge,
sinister-looking ape in Chinese costume, was slowly making his way
across the stage towards me.
“Please go away, Miss Millward,” begged the voice of the stage manager
in my ear. “The monkeys have seen you, and you’ve fascinated them so
that they won’t go through their performance!”
I was wearing a glittering gown and head-dress, and the glitter had
attracted my fellow performers--but not everyone can boast of having
fascinated a troupe of monkeys!
Vaudeville is very strenuous work indeed; your effect must be made at
once, and the whole time you are on the stage the pressure must be kept
up to the topmost notch, but the experience, if rather exhausting, was
most valuable and interesting.
Still, in my first experience of the work in America, I felt very much
inclined to agree with a charming and bright little lady who one day
stopped me in a New York street.
“I’m Marie Lloyd,” she said. “I’m the head-liner this week at Brooklyn;
I see you are next.”
“Yes,” I said; “this is my maid, Lottie; she’s English, too.”
“Oh how do you do, my dear?” cried Miss Lloyd, and to Lottie’s
astonishment shook her warmly by the hand.
“And how do you like America, Miss Lloyd?” I asked her.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied, “but everybody is in such a bally
rush!”
Miss Marie Lloyd was right.
It is indeed curious nowadays when one reflects that a very few years
ago indeed it was considered beneath the dignity of the legitimate
artist to appear on the films, just as it had been previously
considered beneath his or her dignity to appear on the halls, and
in England it was again Sir Herbert Tree who defied convention and
established a precedent when for a huge fee he performed his version of
“Henry VIII” before the camera. Again, innumerable were the criticisms,
and one gentleman, who had attained some little notoriety over a “press
stunt” in which a police-court case over an alleged _matinée_ hat
nuisance had figured, was very caustic in his remarks about “lowering
the dignity of the drama.”
When he was told of the criticism Sir Herbert smiled.
“All I know is that I’ve enjoyed the experience immensely,” he
chuckled. “The money is in my bank, and I think that the gentleman in
question is talking through his _matinée_ hat.”
At the time of my vaudeville experiences a costume comedy, “The
School for Husbands,” by an Englishman, Stanlaws Stange, had made a
great success at Palmer’s Theatre, Broadway, and I liked the play so
much that I counted myself very fortunate in being able to secure
the English rights, especially when Mr. Stange told me that I was
the one English actress he wanted for the part of his heroine. I had
begun to feel a longing for home, and a desire to appear before an
English audience in rôles totally unlike those in which they had been
accustomed to see me--“and,” I said to myself, “if Charles Frohman
and the American public like me in comedy, I don’t see why my own folk
should not.”
So I arranged to take the beautiful Scala Theatre for a season from an
old friend, Dr. Distin Maddick, whom I had first met during my three
years at Drury Lane, where he was the kindly theatre doctor.
I sailed for home in the late autumn of 1905, full of high hopes,
but my home-coming was soon saddened for me by the death of one to
whose memory I can never sufficiently discharge my debt of love and
gratitude--Henry Irving.
“Into Thy hands, O Lord; into Thy hands.”
How often had I heard Henry Irving repeat those lines in “Becket,” and
those were the last words the great actor and great man spoke upon the
stage--the words with which he took farewell of the art he had ennobled.
The swift, merciful and painless ending to a long, brave struggle
against ill health and the caprice of fortune is now a matter of
theatrical history.
More and more had he begun to feel the physical fatigue of his
work--he, the indefatigable, tireless Irving. “The Bells” had been
withdrawn from his repertoire, as involving too much strain; his
faithful friends did all that he permitted them to do to lighten his
labours, but the indomitable spirit still wore out the fragile body,
and on his return from his last performance of “Becket” at the Theatre
Royal, Bradford, he collapsed in the hall of the hotel, and died in the
chair into which he had sunk exhausted.
That chair is now a treasured possession of Seymour Hicks.
“My dear Jessie”--he wrote me--“It is quite true I have possession
of the chair Sir Henry Irving died in. It was presented to me by
the Midland Railway directors, and it stood in the outer hall of
the Midland Railway Hotel at Bradford. Sir Henry Irving drove up to
the door in a four-wheeled cab, and as he was assisted out of it,
having been taken desperately ill at the theatre at the end of the
performance of ‘Becket,’ he collapsed, and was assisted into this
chair, in which he breathed his last. When it was found that he was
dead, he was carried up a short flight of stairs and laid upon the
sofa in the lounge, after which he was placed on the floor. The chair
was marked in pencil by the hall porter, there being twelve others
like it at the hotel, and was initialled by the directors at my
request. It is now in my possession.--Very kindest remembrances, yours
ever, SEYMOUR HICKS.”
His body was brought to his London flat, and then taken to the home of
his kind old friend Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and now, as I write these
lines, the last treasures of that famous house have been dispersed;
house agents’ boards proclaim that all is changed, and dust dims the
windows in Piccadilly through which the historic white china cockatoo
used to glare fixedly at the Green Park.
On the afternoon of Thursday, the 19th of October, I met the faithful
Bram Stoker, and the no less devoted Norman Forbes, who told me that
the coffin was to leave the Baroness’s house for the Abbey that night
about eight o’clock, and with them I took my stand in the silent crowd
some little time before the appointed hour.
Suddenly the traffic stopped, all heads were bared, and passing slowly
through the gloom of a London October evening came the hearse, with
four huge crimson wreaths, followed by one carriage containing Harry
and Laurence Irving, and the devoted valet Walter. It was poignantly
impressive, that sad little procession moving slowly along Piccadilly
in semi-darkness, through the waiting, silent crowd to the Abbey. And
on the morrow they laid his ashes in that “Poets’ Corner” where the
statue of Shakespeare looks down on the tombs of Henry Irving, David
Garrick and his wife, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, and those others
of the great-minded dead who did so much with their lives to ennoble
their art and language.