father would be delighted with Henry's splendid performance, but was
afraid he would be disappointed in me.
"Dear Camma," he answered, "I have given your messages to my father,
but believe me, who am not 'common report,' that he will thoroughly
appreciate your noble, _most_ beautiful and imaginative rendering of
'Camma.' My father and myself hope to see you soon, but not while this
detestable cold weather lasts. We trust that you are not now really the
worse for that night of nights.
"With all our best wishes,
"Yours ever sincerely,
"HALLAM TENNYSON."
"I quite agree with you as to H.I.'s Synorix."
The music of "The Cup" was not up to the level of the rest. Lady
Winchilsea's setting of "Moon on the field and the foam," written within
the compass of eight notes, for my poor singing voice, which will not go
up high nor down low, was effective enough, but the music as a whole was
too "chatty" for a severe tragedy. One night when I was singing my very
best:
"Moon, bring him home, bring him home,
Safe from the dark and the cold,"
some one in the audience _sneezed_. Every one burst out laughing, and I
had to laugh too. I did not even attempt the next line.
"The Cup" was called a failure, but it ran 125 nights, and every night
the house was crowded! On the hundredth night I sent Tennyson the Cup
itself. I had it made in silver from Mr. Godwin's design--a
three-handled cup, pipkin-shaped, standing on three legs.
"The Cup" and "The Corsican Brothers" together made the bill too heavy
and too long, even at a time when we still "rang up" at 7:30; and in the
April following the production of Tennyson's beautiful tragedy--which I
think in sheer poetic intensity surpasses "Becket," although it is not
nearly so good a play--"The Belle's Stratagem" was substituted for "The
Corsican Brothers." This was the first real rollicking comedy that a
Lyceum audience had ever seen, and the way they laughed did my heart
good. I had had enough of tragedy and the horrors by this time, and I
could have cried with joy at that rare and welcome sight--an audience
rocking with laughter. On the first night the play opened propitiously
enough with a loud laugh due to the only accident of the kind that ever
happened at the Lyceum. The curtain went up before the staff had
"cleared," and Arnott, Jimmy and the rest were seen running for their
lives out of the center entrance!
People said that it was so clever of me to play Camma and Letitia Hardy
(the comedy part in "The Belle's Stratagem") on the same evening. They
used to say the same kind thing, "only more so," when Henry played
Jingle and Matthias in "The Bells." But I never liked doing it. A _tour
de force_ is always more interesting to the looker-on than to the person
who is taking part in it. One feels no pride in such an achievement,
which ought to be possible to any one calling himself an actor.
Personally, I never play comedy and tragedy on the same night without a
sense that one is spoiling the other. Harmonies are more beautiful than
contrasts in acting as in other things--and more difficult, too.
Henry Irving was immensely funny as Doricourt. We had sort of Beatrice
and Benedick scenes together, and I began to notice what a lot his
_face_ did for him. There have only been two faces on the stage in my
time--his and Duse's.
My face has never been of much use to me, but my _pace_ has filled the
deficiency sometimes, in comedy at any rate. In "The Belle's Stratagem"
the public had face and pace together, and they seemed to like it.
There was one scene in which I sang "Where are you going to, my pretty
maid?" I used to act it all the way through and give imitations of
Doricourt--ending up by chucking him under the chin. The house rose at
it!
I was often asked at this time when I went out to a party if I would not
sing that dear little song from "The Cup." When I said I didn't think it
would sound very nice without the harp, as it was only a chant on two or
three notes, some one would say:
"Well, then, the song in 'The Belle's Stratagem'! _That_ has no
accompaniment!"
"No," I used to answer, "but it isn't a song. It's a look here, a
gesture there, a laugh anywhere, _and_ Henry Irving's face everywhere!"
Miss Winifred Emery came to us for "The Belle's Stratagem" and played
the part that I had played years before at the Haymarket. She was
bewitching, and in her white wig in the ball-room, beautiful as well.
She knew how to bear herself on the stage instinctively, and could dance
a minuet to perfection. The daughter of Sam Emery, a great comedian in a
day of comedians, and the granddaughter of _the_ Emery, it was not
surprising that she should show aptitude for the stage.
Mr. Howe was another new arrival in the Lyceum company. He was at his
funniest as Mr. Hardy in "The Belle's Stratagem." It was not the first
time that he had played my father in a piece (we had acted father and
daughter in "The Little Treasure"), and I always called him "Daddy." The
dear old man was much liked by every one. He had a tremendous pair of
legs, was bluff and bustling in manner, though courtly too, and cared
more about gardening than acting. He had a little farm at Isleworth, and
he was one of those actors who do not allow the longest theatrical
season to interfere with domesticity and horticulture! Because of his
stout gaitered legs and his Isleworth estate, Henry called him "the
agricultural actor." He was a good old port and whisky drinker, but he
could carry his liquor like a Regency man.
He was a walking history of the stage. "Yes, my dear," he used to say to
me, "I was in the original cast of the first performance of 'The Lady of
Lyons,' which Lord Lytton gave Macready as a present, and I was the
original Franois when 'Richelieu' was produced. Lord Lytton wrote this
part for a lady, but at rehearsal it was found that there was a good
deal of movement awkward for a lady to do, so I was put into it."
"What year was it, Daddy?"
"God bless me, I must think.... It must have been about a year after Her
Majesty took the throne."
For forty years and nine months old Mr. Howe had acted at the Haymarket
Theater! When he was first there, the theater was lighted with oil
lamps, and when a lamp smoked or went out, one of the servants of the
theater came on and lighted it up again during the action of the play.
It was the acting of Edmund Kean in "Richard III." which first filled
Daddy Howe with the desire to go on the stage. He saw the great actor
again when he was living in retirement at Richmond--in those last sad
days when the Baroness Burdett-Coutts (then the rich young heiress, Miss
Angela Burdett-Coutts), driving up the hill, saw him sitting huddled up
on one of the public seats and asked if she could do anything for him.
"Nothing, I think," he answered sadly. "Ah yes, there is one thing. You
were kind enough the other day to send me some very excellent brandy.
_Send me some more._"[1]
[Footnote 1: This was a favorite story of Henry Irving's, and for that
reason alone I think it worth telling, although Sir Squire Bancroft
assures me that stubborn dates make it impossible that the tale should
be true.]
Of Henry Irving as an actor Mr. Howe once said to me that at first he
was prejudiced against him because he was so different from the other
great actors that he had known.
"'This isn't a bit like Iago,' I said to myself when I first saw him in
'Othello.' That was at the end of the first act. But he had commanded my
attention to his innovations. In the second act I found myself deeply
interested in watching and studying the development of his conception.
In the third act I was fascinated by his originality. By the end of the
play I wondered that I could ever have thought that the part ought to be
played differently."
Daddy Howe was the first member of the Lyceum company who got a
reception from the audience on his entrance as a public favorite. He
remained with us until his death, which took place on our fourth
American tour in 1893.
Every one has commended Henry Irving's kindly courtesy in inviting Edwin
Booth to come and play with him at the Lyceum Theater. Booth was having
a wretched season at the Princess's, which was when he went there a
theater on the down-grade, and under a thoroughly commercial management.
The great American actor, through much domestic trouble and bereavement,
had more or less "given up" things. At any rate he had not the spirit
which can combat such treatment as he received at the Princess's, where
the pieces in which he appeared were "thrown" on to the stage with every
mark of assumption that he was not going to be a success.
Yet, although he accepted with gratitude Henry Irving's suggestion that
he should migrate from the Princess's to the Lyceum and appear there
three times a week as Othello with the Lyceum company and its manager to
support him, I cannot be sure that Booth's pride was not more hurt by
this magnificent hospitality than it ever could have been by disaster.
It is always more difficult to _receive_ than to _give_.
Few people thought of this, I suppose. I did, because I could imagine
Henry Irving in America in the same situation--accepting the hospitality
of Booth. Would not he too have been melancholy, quiet, unassertive,
_almost_ as uninteresting and uninterested as Booth was?
I saw him first at a benefit performance at Drury Lane. I came to the
door of the room where Henry was dressing, and Booth was sitting there
with his back to me.
"Here's Miss Terry," said Henry as I came round the door. Booth looked
up at me swiftly. I have never in any face, in any country, seen such
wonderful eyes. There was a mystery about his appearance and his
manner--a sort of pride which seemed to say: "Don't try to know me, for
I am not what I have been." He seemed broken, and devoid of ambition.
At rehearsal he was very gentle and apathetic. Accustomed to playing
Othello with stock companies, he had few suggestions to make about the
stage-management. The part was to him more or less of a monologue.
"I shall never make you black," he said one morning. "When I take your
hand I shall have a corner of my drapery in my hand. That will protect
you."
I am bound to say that I thought of Mr. Booth's "protection" with some
yearning the next week when I played Desdemona to _Henry's_ Othello.
Before he had done with me I was nearly as black as he.
Booth was a melancholy, dignified Othello, but not great as Salvini was
great. Salvini's Hamlet made me scream with mirth, but his Othello was
the grandest, biggest, most glorious thing. We often prate of "reserved
force." Salvini had it, for the simple reason that his was the gigantic
force which may be restrained because of its immensity. Men have no need
to dam up a little purling brook. If they do it in acting, it is tame,
absurd and pretentious. But Salvini held himself in, and still his groan
was like a tempest, his passion huge.
The fact is that, apart from Salvini's personal genius, the foreign
temperament is better fitted to deal with Othello than the English.
Shakespeare's French and Italians, Greeks and Latins, medievals and
barbarians, fancifuls and reals, all have a dash of Elizabethan English
men in them, but not Othello.
Booth's Othello was very helpful to my Desdemona. It is difficult to
preserve the simple, heroic blindness of Desdemona to the fact that her
lord mistrusts her, if her lord is raving and stamping under her nose!
Booth was gentle in the scenes with Desdemona until _the_ scene where
Othello overwhelms her with the foul word and destroys her fool's
paradise. Love _does_ make fools of us all, surely, but I wanted to make
Desdemona out the fool who is the victim of love and faith; not the
simpleton, whose want of tact in continually pleading Cassio's cause is
sometimes irritating to the audience.
My greatest triumph as Desdemona was not gained with the audience but
with Henry Irving! He found my endeavors to accept comfort from Iago so
pathetic that they brought the tears to his eyes. It was the oddest
sensation when I said "Oh, good Iago, what shall I do to win my lord
again?" to look up--my own eyes dry, for Desdemona is past crying
then--and see Henry's eyes at their biggest, luminous, soft and full of
tears! He was, in spite of Iago and in spite of his power of identifying
himself with the part, very deeply moved by my acting. But he knew how
to turn it to his purpose: he obtrusively took the tears with his
fingers and blew his nose with much feeling, softly and long (so much
expression there is, by the way, in blowing the nose on the stage), so
that the audience might think his emotion a fresh stroke of hypocrisy.
Every one liked Henry's Iago. For the first time in his life he knew
what it was to win unanimous praise. Nothing could be better, I think,
than Mr. Walkley's[1] description: "Daringly Italian, a true compatriot
of the Borgias, or rather, better than Italians, that devil incarnate,
an Englishman Italianate."
[Footnote 1: Mr. A.B. Walkley, the gifted dramatic critic of _The
Times_.]
One adored him, devil though he was. He was so full of charm, so
sincerely the "honest" Iago, peculiarly sympathetic with Othello,
Desdemona, Roderigo, _all_ of them--except his wife. It was only in the
soliloquies and in the scenes with his wife that he revealed his devil's
nature. Could one ever forget those grapes which he plucked in the first
act, and slowly ate, spitting out the seeds, as if each one represented
a worthy virtue to be put out of his mouth, as God, according to the
evangelist, puts out the lukewarm virtues. His Iago and his Romeo in
different ways proved his power to portray _Italian_ passions--the
passions of lovely, treacherous people, who will either sing you a love
sonnet or stab you in the back--you are not sure which!
We played "Othello" for six weeks, three performances a week, to guinea
stalls, and could have played it longer. Each week Henry and Booth
changed parts. For both of them it was a change _for the worse_.
Booth's Iago seemed deadly commonplace after Henry's. He was always the
snake in the grass; he showed the villain in all the scenes. He could
not resist the temptation of making polished and ornate effects.
Henry Irving's Othello was condemned almost as universally as his Iago
was praised. For once I find myself with the majority. He screamed and
ranted and raved--lost his voice, was slow where he should have been
swift, incoherent where he should have been strong. I could not bear to
see him in the part. It was painful to me. Yet night after night he
achieved in the speech to the Senate one of the most superb and
beautiful bits of acting of his life. It was _wonderful_. He spoke the
speech, beaming on Desdemona all the time. The gallantry of the thing is
indescribable.
I think his failure as Othello was one of the unspoken bitternesses of
Henry's life. When I say "failure" I am of course judging him by his own
standard, and using the word to describe what he was to himself, not
what he was to the public. On the last night, he rolled up the clothes
that he had worn as the Moor one by one, carefully laying one garment on
top of the other, and then, half-humorously and very deliberately said,
"_Never again_!" Then he stretched himself with his arms above his head
and gave a great sigh of relief.
Mr. Pinero was excellent as Roderigo in this production. He was always
good in the "silly ass" type of part, and no one could say of him that
he was playing himself!
Desdemona is not counted a big part by actresses, but I loved playing
it. Some nights I played it beautifully. My appearance was right--I was
such a poor wraith of a thing. But let there be no mistake--it took
strength to act this weakness and passiveness of Desdemona's. I soon
found that, like Cordelia, she has plenty of character.
Reading the play the other day, I studied the opening scene. It is the
finest opening to a play I know.
How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and daughters, and how little
stock he seems to take of _mothers_! Portia and Desdemona, Cordelia,
Rosalind and Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine and Hermione,
Ophelia, Jessica, Hero, and many more are daughters of _fathers_, but of
their mothers we hear nothing. My own daughter called my attention to
this fact quite recently, and it is really a singular fact. Of mothers
of sons there are plenty of examples: Constance, Volumnia, the Countess
Rousillon, Gertrude; but if there are mothers of daughters at all, they
are poor examples, like Juliet's mother and Mrs. Page. I wonder if in
all the many hundreds of books written on Shakespeare and his plays this
point has been taken up? I once wrote a paper on the "Letters in
Shakespeare's Plays," and congratulated myself that they had never been
made a separate study. The very day after I first read my paper before
the British Empire Shakespeare League, a lady wrote to me from Oxford
and said I was mistaken in thinking that there was no other contribution
to the subject. She enclosed an essay of her own which had either been
published or read before some society. Probably some one else has dealt
with Shakespeare's patronage of fathers and neglect of mothers! I often
wonder what the mothers of Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia were like! I
think Lear must have married twice.
This was the first of Henry Irving's great Shakespearean productions.
"Hamlet" and "Othello" had been mounted with care, but, in spite of
statements that I have seen to the contrary, they were not true
reflections of Irving as a producer. In beauty I do not think that
"Romeo and Juliet" surpassed "The Cup," but it was very sumptuous,
impressive and Italian. It was the most _elaborate_ of all the Lyceum
productions. In it Henry first displayed his mastery of crowds. The
brawling of the rival houses in the streets, the procession of girls to
wake Juliet on her wedding morning, the musicians, the magnificent
reconciliation of the two houses which closed the play, every one on the
stage holding a torch, were all treated with a marvelous sense of
pictorial effect.
Henry once said to me: "'Hamlet' could be played anywhere on its acting
merits. It marches from situation to situation. But 'Romeo and Juliet'
proceeds from picture to picture. Every line suggests a picture. It is a
dramatic poem rather than a drama, and I mean to treat it from that
point of view."
While he was preparing the production he revived "The Two Roses," a
company in which as Digby Grant he had made a great success years
before. I rehearsed the part of Lottie two or three times, but Henry
released me because I was studying Juliet; and as he said, "You've got
to do all you know with it."
Perhaps the sense of this responsibility weighed on me. Perhaps I was
neither young enough nor old enough to play Juliet. I read everything
that had ever been written about her before I had myself decided what
she was. It was a dreadful mistake. That was the first thing wrong with
my Juliet--lack of original impulse.
As for the second and the third and the fourth--well, I am not more
than common vain, I trust, but I see no occasion to write them _all_
down.
It was perhaps the greatest opportunity that I had yet had at the
Lyceum. I studied the part at my cottage at Hampton Court in a bedroom
looking out over the park. There was nothing wrong with _that_. By the
way, how important it is to be careful about environment and everything
else when one is studying. One ought to be in the country, but not all
the time.... It is good to go about and see pictures, hear music, and
watch everything. One should be very much alone, and should study early
and late--all night, if need be, even at the cost of sleep. Everything
that one does or thinks or sees will have an effect upon the part,
precisely as on an unborn child.
I wish now that instead of reading how this and that actress had played
Juliet, and cracking my brain over the different readings of her lines
and making myself familiar with the different opinions of philosophers
and critics, I had gone to Verona, and just _imagined_. Perhaps the most
wonderful description of Juliet, as she should be acted, occurs in
Gabriele d'Annunzio's "Il Fuoco." In the book an Italian actress tells
her friend how she played the part when she was a girl of fourteen in an
open-air theater near Verona. Could a girl of fourteen play such a part?
Yes, if she were not youthful, only young with the youth of the poet,
tragically old as some youth is.
Now I understand Juliet better. Now I know how she should be played. But
time is inexorable. At sixty, know what one may, one cannot play Juliet.
I know that Henry Irving's production of "Romeo and Juliet" has been
attributed to my ambition. What nonsense! Henry Irving now had in view
the production of all Shakespeare's actable plays, and naturally "Romeo
and Juliet" would come as early as possible in the programme.
The music was composed by Sir Julius Benedict, and was exactly right.
There was no _leit-motiv_, no attempt to reflect the passionate emotion
of the drama, but a great deal of Southern joy, of flutes and wood and
wind. At a rehearsal which had lasted far into the night I asked Sir
Julius, who was very old, if he wasn't sleepy.
"Sleepy! Good heavens, no! I never sleep more than two hours. It's the
end of my life, and I don't want to waste it in sleep!"
There is generally some "old 'un" in a company now who complains of
insufficient rehearsals, and says, perhaps, "Think of Irving's
rehearsals! They were the real thing." While we were rehearsing "Romeo
and Juliet" I remember that Mrs. Stirling, a charming and ripe old
actress whom Henry had engaged to play the nurse, was always groaning
out that she had not rehearsed enough.
"Oh, these modern ways!" she used to say. "We never have any rehearsals
at all. How am I going to play the Nurse?"
She played it splendidly--indeed, she as the Nurse and old Tom Mead as
the Apothecary--the two "old 'uns" romped away with chief honors, had
the play all to nothing.
I had one battle with Mrs. Stirling over "tradition." It was in the
scene beginning--
"The clock struck twelve when I did send the nurse,
And yet she is not here...."
Tradition said that Juliet must go on coquetting and clicking over the
Nurse to get the news of Romeo out of her. Tradition said that Juliet
must give imitations of the Nurse on the line "Where's your mother?" in
order to get that cheap reward, "a safe laugh." I felt that it was
wrong. I felt that Juliet was angry with the Nurse. Each time she
delayed in answering I lost my temper, with genuine passion. At "Where's
your mother?" I spoke with indignation, tears and rage. We were a long
time coaxing Mrs. Stirling to let the scene be played on these lines,
but this was how it _was_ played eventually.
She was the only Nurse that I have ever seen who did not play the part
like a female pantaloon. She did not assume any great decrepitude. In
the "Cords" scene, where the Nurse tells Juliet of the death of Paris,
she did not play for comedy at all, but was very emotional. Her parrot
scream when she found me dead was horribly real and effective.
Years before I had seen Mrs. Stirling act at the Adelphi with Benjamin
Webster, and had cried out: "_That's_ my idea of an actress!" In those
days she was playing Olivia (in a version of the "Vicar of Wakefield" by
Tom Taylor), Peg Woffington, and other parts of the kind. She swept on
to the stage and in that magical way, never, never to be learned,
_filled_ it. She had such breadth of style, such a lovely voice, such a
beautiful expressive eye! When she played the Nurse at the Lyceum her
voice had become a little jangled and harsh, but her eye was still
bright and her art had not abated--not one little bit! Nor had her
charm. Her smile was the most fascinating, irresistible thing
imaginable.
The production was received with abuse by the critics. It was one of our
failures, yet it ran a hundred and fifty nights!
Henry Irving's Romeo had more bricks thrown at it even than my Juliet! I
remember that not long after we opened, a well-known politician who had
enough wit and knowledge of the theater to have taken a more original
view, came up to me and said:
"I say, E.T., why is Irving playing Romeo?"
I looked at his distraught. "You should ask me why I am playing Juliet!
Why are we any of us doing what we have to do?"
"Oh, _you're_ all right. But Irving!"
"I don't agree with you," I said. I was growing a little angry by this
time. "Besides, who would you have play Romeo?"