"grand tour" of Germany. Henry, with his accustomed royal way of doing
things, took a party which included my daughter Edy, Mr. and Mrs. Comyns
Carr, and Mr. Hawes Craven, who was to paint the scenery. We bought
nearly all the properties used in "Faust" in Nuremberg, and many other
things which we did not use, that took Henry's fancy. One beautifully
carved escutcheon, the finest armorial device I ever saw, he bought at
this time and presented it in after years to the famous American
connoisseur, Mrs. Jack Gardiner. It hangs now in one of the rooms of her
palace at Boston.
It was when we were going in the train along one of the most beautiful
stretches of the Rhine that Sally Holland, who accompanied us as my
maid, said:--
"Uncommon pretty scenery, dear, I must say!"
When we laughed uncontrollably, she added:
"Well, dear, _I_ think so!"
During the run of "Faust" Henry visited Oxford and gave his address on
"Four Actors" (Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, Kean). He met there one of
the many people who had recently been attacking him on the ground of too
long runs and too much spectacle. He wrote me an amusing account of the
duel between them:
"I had supper last night at New College after the affair. A---- was
there, and I had it out with him--to the delight of all.
"'_Too much decoration_,' etc., etc.
"I asked him what there was in 'Faust' in the matter of
appointments, etc., that he would like left out?'
"Answer: Nothing.
"'Too long runs.'
"'You, sir, are a poet,' I said. 'Perhaps it may be my privilege
some day to produce a play of yours. Would you like it to have a
long run or a short one?' (Roars of laughter.)
"Answer: 'Well--er--well, of course, Mr. Irving, you--well--well, a
short run, of course for _art_, but--'
"'Now, sir, you're on oath,' said I. 'Suppose that the fees were
rolling in £10 and more a night--would you rather the play were a
failure or a success?'
"'Well, well, as _you_ put it--I must say--er--I would rather my
play had a _long_ run!'
"A---- floored!
"He has all his life been writing articles running down good work
and crying up the impossible, and I was glad to show him up a bit!
"The Vice-Chancellor made a most lovely speech after the
address--an eloquent and splendid tribute to the stage.
"Bourchier presented the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a
young man in a greater funk--because, I suppose, he had imitated me
so often!
"From the address:
"'We have watched with keen and enthusiastic interest the fine
intellectual quality of all these representations from Hamlet to
Mephistopheles with which you have enriched the contemporary stage.
To your influence we owe deeper knowledge and more reverent study
of the master mind of Shakespeare.'
"All very nice indeed!"
I never cared much for Henry's Mephistopheles--a twopence colored part,
anyway. Of course he had his moments--he had them in every part--but
they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he wrote in the
student's book, "Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." He never
looked at the book, and the nature of the _spirit_ appeared suddenly in
a most uncanny fashion. Another was in the Spinning-wheel Scene when
Faust defies Mephistopheles, and he silences him with, "_I am a
spirit_." Henry looked to grow a gigantic height--to hover over the
ground instead of walking on it. It was terrifying.
I made valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My
instructor was Mr. Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin, had
recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the North of England.
I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel in the
opera, and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always broke, and
at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent; but at least I
worked my wheel right, and gave an impression that I could spin my pound
of thread a day with the best.
Two operatic stars did me the honor to copy my Margaret dress--Madame
Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many
mothers who took their daughters to see the opera of "Faust" would not
bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was Princess
Mary of Teck, a constant patron of most of our plays.
Other people "missed the music." The popularity of an opera will often
kill a play, although the play may have existed before the music was
ever thought of. The Lyceum "Faust" held its own against Gounod. I liked
our incidental music to the action much better. It was taken from many
different sources and welded into an effective and beautiful whole by
our clever musical director, Mr. Meredith Ball.
In many ways "Faust" was our heaviest production. About four hundred
ropes were used, each rope with a name. The list of properties and
instructions to the carpenters became a joke among the theater staff.
When Henry first took "Faust" into the provinces, the head carpenter at
Liverpool, Myers by name, being something of a humorist, copied out the
list on a long thin sheet of paper, which rolled up like a royal
proclamation. Instead of "God save the Queen!" he wrote at the foot,
with many flourishes: "God help Bill Myers!"
The crowded houses at "Faust" were largely composed of "repeaters," as
Americans call those charming playgoers who come to see a play again and
again. We found favor with the artists and musicians too, even in Faust!
Here is a nice letter I got during the run (it _was_ a long one) from
that gifted singer and good woman, Madame Antoinette Sterling:--
"My dear Miss Terry,--
"I was quite as disappointed as yourself that you were not at St.
James's Hall last Monday for my concert.... Jean Ingelow said she
enjoyed the afternoon very much....
"I wonder if you would like to come to luncheon some day and have a
little chat with her? But perhaps you already know her. I love her
dearly. She has one fault--she never goes to the theater. Oh my! What
she misses, poor thing, poor thing! We have already seen 'Faust' twice,
and are going again soon, and shall take the George Macdonalds this
time. The Holman Hunts were delighted. He is one of the most interesting
and clever men I have ever met, and she is very charming and clever too.
How beautifully plain you write! Give me the recipe.
"With many kind greetings,
"Believe me sincerely yours,
"ANTOINETTE STERLING MACKINLAY."
My girl Edy was one of the angels in the vision in the last act of
"Faust," an event which Henry commemorated in a little rhyme that he
sent me on Valentine's Day with some beautiful flowers:
"White and red roses,
Sweet and fresh posies,
One bunch for Edy, _Angel_ of mine--
One bunch for Nell, my dear Valentine."
Mr. Toole ran a burlesque on the Lyceum "Faust," called
"Faust-and-Loose." Henry did not care for burlesques as a rule. He
thought Fred Leslie's exact imitation of him, face, spectacles,
voice--everything was like Henry except the ballet-skirt--in the worst
taste. But everything that Toole did was to him adorable. Marie Linden
gave a really clever imitation of me as Marguerite. She and her sister
Laura both had the trick of taking me off. I recognized the truth of
Laura's caricature in the burlesque of "The Vicar of Wakefield" when as
Olivia she made her entrance, leaping impulsively over a stile!
There was an absurd chorus of girl "mashers" in "Faust-and-Loose,"
dressed in tight black satin coats, who besides dancing and singing had
lines in unison, such as "No, no!" "We will!" As one of these girls
Violet Vanbrugh made her first appearance on the stage. In her case "we
will!" proved prophetic. It was her plucky "I will get on" which finally
landed her in her present successful position.
Violet Barnes was the daughter of Prebendary Barnes of Exeter, who, when
he found his daughter stage-struck, behaved far more wisely than most
parents. He gave her £100 and sent her to London with her old nurse to
look after her, saying that if she really "meant business" she would
find an engagement before the £100 was gone. Violet had inherited some
talent from her mother, who was a very clever amateur actress, and the
whole family were fond of getting up entertainments. But Violet didn't
know quite how far £100 would go, or wouldn't go. I happened to call on
her at her lodgings near Baker Street one afternoon, and found her
having her head washed, and crying bitterly all the time! She had come
to the end of the £100, she had not got an engagement, and thought she
would have to go home defeated. There was something funny in the tragic
situation. Vi was sitting on the floor, drying her hair, crying, and
drinking port wine to cure a cold in her head!
I told her not to be a goose, but to cheer up and come and stay with me
until something turned up. We packed the old nurse back to Devonshire.
Violet came and stayed with me, and in due course something did turn up.
Mr. Toole came to dinner, and Violet, acting on my instructions to ask
every one she saw for an engagement, asked Mr. Toole! He said, "That's
all right, my dear. Of course. Come down and see me to-morrow." Dear old
Toole! The kindliest of men! Violet was with him for some time, and
played at his theater in Mr. Barrie's first piece "Walker London." Her
sister Irene, Seymour Hicks, and Mary Ansell (now Mrs. Barrie) were all
in the cast.
This was all I did to "help" Violet Vanbrugh, now Mrs. Arthur Bourchier
and one of our best actresses, in her stage career. She helped herself,
as most people do who get on. I am afraid that I have discouraged more
stage aspirants than I have encouraged. Perhaps I have snubbed really
talented people, so great is my horror of girls taking to the stage as a
profession when they don't realize what they are about. I once told an
elderly aspirant that it was quite useless for any one to go on the
stage who had not either great beauty or great talent. She wrote saying
that my letter had been a great relief to her, as now she was not
discouraged. "I have _both_."
There is one actress on the English stage whom I did definitely
encourage, of whose talent I was _certain_.
When my daughter was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, Dr. (now
Sir Alexander) Mackenzie asked me to distribute the medals to the
Elocution Class at the end of the term. I was quite "new to the job,"
and didn't understand the procedure. No girl, I have learned since, can
be given the gold medal until she has won both the bronze and the silver
medals--that is, until she has been at the Academy three years. I was
for giving the gold medalists, who only wanted certificates, _bronze_
medals; and of one young girl who was in her first year and only
entitled to a bronze medal, I said: "Oh, she must have the gold medal,
of course!"
She was a queer-looking child, handsome, with a face suggesting all
manner of possibilities. When she stood up to read the speech from
"Richard II." she was nervous, but courageously stood her ground. She
began slowly, and with a most "fetching" voice, to _think_ out the
words. You saw her think them, heard her speak them. It was so different
from the intelligent elocution, the good recitation, but bad
impersonation of the others! "A pathetic face, a passionate voice, a
_brain_," I thought to myself. It must have been at this point that the
girl flung away the book and began to act, in an undisciplined way, of
course, but with such true emotion, such intensity, that the tears came
to my eyes. The tears came to her eyes too. We both wept, and then we
embraced, and then we wept again. It was an easy victory for her. She
was incomparably better than any one. "She has to work," I wrote in my
diary that day. "Her life must be given to it, and then she will--well,
she will achieve just as high as she works." Lena Pocock was the girl's
name, but she changed it to Lena Ashwell when she went on the stage.
In the days of the elocution class there was still some idea of her
becoming a singer, but I strongly advised the stage, and wrote to my
friend J. Comyns Carr, who was managing the Comedy Theater, that I knew
a girl with "supreme talent" whom he ought to engage. Lena was engaged.
After that she had her fight for success, but she went steadily forward.
Henry Irving has often been attacked for not preferring Robert Louis
Stevenson's "Macaire" to the version which he actually produced in 1883.
It would have been hardly more unreasonable to complain of his producing
"Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern."
Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed
for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a
delightful idiot of himself in it. Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a
skit, a _satire_ on the real Macaire. The Lyceum was _not_ a burlesque
house! Why should Henry have done it?
It was funny to see Toole and Henry rehearsing together for "Macaire."
Henry was always _plotting_ to be funny. When Toole as Jacques Strop hid
the dinner in his pocket, Henry, after much labor, thought of his hiding
the plate inside his waistcoat. There was much laughter later on when
Macaire, playfully tapping Strop with his stick, cracked the plate, and
the pieces fell out! Toole hadn't to bother about such subtleties, and
Henry's deep-laid plans for getting a laugh must have seemed funny to
dear Toole, who had only to come on and say "Whoop!" and the audience
roared!
Henry's death as Macaire was one of a long list of splendid deaths.
Macaire knows the game is up, and makes a rush for the French windows at
the back of the stage. The soldiers on the stage shoot him before he
gets away. Henry did not drop, but turned round, swaggered impudently
down to the table, leaned on it, then suddenly rolled over, dead.
Henry's production of "Werner" for one matinŽe was to do some one a good
turn, and when Henry did a "good turn," he did it magnificently.[1] We
rehearsed the play as carefully as if we were in for a long run.
Beautiful dresses were made for me by my friend Alice Carr. But when we
had given that one matinŽe, they were put away for ever. The play may be
described as gloom, gloom, gloom. It was worse than "The Iron Chest."
[Footnote 1: _From my Diary, June_ 1, 1887.--"Westland-Marston Benefit
at the Lyceum. A triumphant success entirely due to the genius and
admirable industry and devotion of H.I., for it is just the dullest play
to read as ever was! He made it _intensely_ interesting."]
While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner," I was pleasing myself
with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was at
this time Wills's secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help
Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of
Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinŽe of it at some other theater,
but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said: "You must
do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the theater."
So we had the matinŽe at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree
were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry
saw me act--a whole part and from the "front" at least, for he had seen
and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had known me
such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a surprise. "I
wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you realized," he
wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me, and I continued
to do it "on and off" here and in America until 1902.
Many people said that I was good but the play was bad. This was hard on
Alfred Calmour. He had created the opportunity for me, and few plays
with the beauty of "The Amber Heart" have come my way since. "He thinks
it's all his doing!" said Henry. "If he only knew!" "Well, that's the
way of authors," I answered. "They imagine so much more about their work
than we put into it, that although we may seem to the outsider to be
creating, to the author we are, at our best, only doing our duty by
him."
Our next production was "Macbeth." Meanwhile we had visited America
three times. It is now my intention to give some account of my tours in
America, of my friends there, and of some of the impressions that the
vast, wonderful country made on me.
XI
AMERICA
THE FIRST OF EIGHT TOURS
The first time that there was any talk of my going to America was, I
think, in 1874, when I was playing in "The Wandering Heir." Dion
Boucicault wanted me to go, and dazzled me with figures, but I expect
the cautious Charles Reade influenced me against accepting the
engagement.
When I did go in 1883, I was thirty-five and had an assured position in
my profession. It was the first of eight tours, seven of which I went
with Henry Irving. The last was in 1907 after his death. I also went to
America one summer on a pleasure trip. The tours lasted three months at
least, seven months at most. After a rough calculation, I find that I
have spent not quite five years of my life in America. Five out of sixty
is not a large proportion, yet I often feel that I am half American.
This says a good deal for the hospitality of a people who can make a
stranger feel so completely at home in their midst. Perhaps it also says
something for my adaptableness!
"When we do not speak of things with a partiality full of love, what we
say is not worth being repeated." That was the answer of a courteous
Frenchman who was asked for his impressions of a country. In any case it
is imprudent to give one's impressions of America. The country is so
vast and complex that even those who have amassed mountains of
impressions soon find that there still are mountains more! I have lived
in New York, Boston and Chicago for a month at a time, and have felt
that to know any of these great cities even superficially would take a
year. I have become acquainted with this and that class of American, but
I realize that there are thousands of other classes that remain unknown
to me.
I set out in 1882 from Liverpool on board the _Britannic_ with the fixed
conviction that I should never, never return. For six weeks before we
started, the word America had only to be breathed to me, and I burst
into floods of tears! I was leaving my children, my bullfinch, my
parrot, my "aunt" Boo, whom I never expected to see alive again, just
because she said I never would; and I was going to face the unknown
dangers of the Atlantic and of a strange, barbarous land. Our farewell
performances in London had cheered me up a little--though I wept
copiously at every one--by showing us that we should be missed. Henry
Irving's position seemed to be confirmed and ratified by all that took
place before his departure. The dinners he had to eat, the speeches that
he had to make and to listen to, were really terrific!
One speech at the Rabelais Club had, it was said, the longest peroration
on record. It was this kind of thing: Where is our friend Irving going?
He is not going like Nares to face the perils of the far North. He is
not going like A---- to face something else. He is not going to China,
etc.,--and so on. After about the hundredth "he is not going," Lord
Houghton, who was one of the guests, grew very impatient and
interrupted the orator with: "Of course he isn't! He's going to New York
by the Cunard Line. It'll take him about a week!"
Many people came to see us off at Liverpool, but I only remember seeing
Mrs. Langtry and Oscar Wilde. It was at this time that Oscar Wilde had
begun to curl his hair in the manner of the Prince Regent. "Curly hair
to match the curly teeth," said some one. Oscar Wilde _had_ ugly teeth,
and he was not proud of his mouth. He used to put his hand to his mouth
when he talked so that it should not be noticed. His brow and eyes were
very beautiful.
Well, I was not "disappointed in the Atlantic," as Oscar Wilde was the
first to say, though many people have said it since without
acknowledging its source.
My first voyage was a voyage of enchantment to me. The ship was laden
with pig-iron, and she rolled and rolled and rolled. She could never
roll too much for me! I have always been a splendid sailor, and I feel
jolly at sea. The sudden leap from home into the wilderness of waves
does not give me any sensation of melancholy.
What I thought I was going to see when I arrived in America I hardly
remember. I had a vague idea that all American women wore red flannel
shirts and carried bowie knives and that I might be sandbagged in the
street! From somewhere or other I had derived an impression that New
York was an ugly, noisy place.
Ugly! When I first saw that marvelous harbor I nearly cried--it was so
beautiful. Whenever I come now to the unequaled approach to New York I
wonder what Americans must think of the approach from the sea to London!
How different are the mean, flat, marshy banks of the Thames and the
wooden toy lighthouse at Dungeness to the vast, spreading Hudson with
its busy multitude of steamboats, and ferryboats, its wharf upon wharf,
and its tall statue of Liberty dominating all the racket and bustle of
the sea traffic of the world!
That was one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry
of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal and enormous,
made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers"--what a brutal name it is when one
comes to think of it!--so splendid in the landscape now, did not exist
in 1883, but I find it difficult to divide my early impressions from my
later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge though, hung up high in the air
like a vast spider's web.
Between 1883 and 1893 I noticed a great change in New York and other
cities. In ten years they seemed to have grown with the energy of
tropical plants. But between 1893 and 1907 I saw no evidence of such
feverish increase. It is possible that the Americans are arriving at a
stage when they can no longer beat the records! There is a vast
difference between one of the old New York brownstone houses and one of
the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the
Times Square Building or the still more amazing Flat Iron Building,
which is said to oscillate at the top--it is so far from the
ground--there is very little difference. I hear that they are now
beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change
the appearance of New York for a long time.
I had not to endure the wooden shed in which most people landing in
America have to struggle with the Custom-house officials--a struggle as
brutal as a "round in the ring," as Paul Bourget describes it. We were
taken off the _Britannic_ in a tug, and Mr. Abbey, Laurence Barrett, and
many other friends met us--including the much-dreaded reporters.
They were not a bit dreadful, but very quick to see what kind of a man
Henry was. In a minute he was on the best of terms with them. He had on
what I used to call his best "Jingle" manner--a manner full of
refinement, bonhomie, elegance and geniality.
"Have a cigar--have a cigar." That was the first remark of Henry's,
which put every one at ease. He also wanted to be at ease and have a
good smoke. It was just the right merry greeting to the press
representatives of a nation whose sense of humor is far more to be
relied on than its sense of reverence.
"Now come on, all of you!" he said to the interviewers. He talked to
them all in a mass and showed no favoritism. It says much for his tact
and diplomacy that he did not "put his foot in it." The Americans are
suspicious of servile adulation from a stranger, yet are very sensitive
to criticism.
"These gentlemen want to have a few words with you," said Henry to me
when the reporters had done with him. Then with a mischievous expression
he whispered: "Say something pleasant! Merry and bright!"
Merry and bright! I felt it! The sense of being a stranger entering a
strange land, the rushing sense of loneliness and foreignness was
overpowering my imagination. I blew my nose hard and tried to keep back
my tears, but the first reporter said: "Can I send any message to your
friends in England?"
I answered: "Tell them I never loved 'em so much as now," and burst into
tears! No wonder that he wrote in his paper that I was "a woman of
extreme nervous sensibility." Another of them said that "my figure was
spare almost to attenuation." America soon remedied that. I began to put
on flesh before I had been in the country a week, and it was during my
fifth American tour that I became really fat for the first time in my
life.