Manchester, I think. A carpenter had thrown down his coat with a ham
sandwich in the pocket, over an open trap on the stage. Fussie, nosing
and nudging after the sandwich, fell through and was killed instantly.
When they brought up the dog after the performance, every man took his
hat off.... Henry was not told until the end of the play.
He took it so very quietly that I was frightened, and said to his son
Laurence who was on that tour:
"Do let's go to his hotel and see how he is."
We drove there and found him sitting eating his supper with the poor
dead Fussie, who would never eat supper any more, curled up in his rug
on the sofa. Henry was talking to the dog exactly as if it were alive.
The next day he took Fussie back in the train with him to London,
covered with a coat. He is buried in the dogs' cemetery, Hyde Park.
His death made an enormous difference to Henry. Fussie was his constant
companion. When he died, Henry was really alone. He never spoke of what
he felt about it, but it was easy to know.
We used to get hints how to get this and that from watching Fussie! His
look, his way of walking! He _sang_, whispered eloquently and low--then
barked suddenly and whispered again! Such a lesson in the law of
contrasts!
The first time that Henry went to the Lyceum after Fussie's death, every
one was anxious and distressed, knowing how he would miss the dog in his
dressing-room. Then an odd thing happened. The wardrobe cat, who had
never been near the room in Fussie's lifetime, came down and sat on
Fussie's cushion! No one knew how the "Governor" would take it. But when
Walter was sent out to buy some meat for it, we saw that Henry was not
going to resent it! From that night onwards the cat always sat night
after night in the same place, and Henry liked its companionship. In
1902, when he left the theater for good, he wrote to me:
"The place is now given up to the rats--all light cut off, and only
Barry[1] and a foreman left. Everything of mine I've moved away,
including the Cat!"
[Footnote 1: The stage-door keeper.]
I have never been to America yet without going to Niagara. The first
time I saw the great falls I thought it all more wonderful than
beautiful. I got away by myself from my party, and looked and looked at
it, and I listened--and at last it became dreadful and I was
_frightened_ at it. I wouldn't go alone again, for I felt queer and
wanted to follow the great flow of it. But at twelve o'clock, with the
"sun upon the topmost height of the day's journey," most of Nature's
sights appear to me to be at their plainest. In the evening, when the
shadows grow long and all hard lines are blurred, how soft, how
different, everything is! It was noontide, that garish cruel time of
day, when I first came in sight of the falls. I'm glad I went again in
other lights--but one should live by the side of all this greatness to
learn to love it. Only once did I catch Niagara in _beauty_, with pits
of color in its waters, no one color definite--all was wonderment,
allurement, fascination. The _last_ time I was there it was wonderful,
but not beautiful any more. The merely stupendous, the merely marvelous,
have always repelled me. I cannot _realize_, and become terribly weak
and doddering. No terrific scene gives me pleasure. The great ca–ons
give me unrest, just as the long low lines of my Sussex marshland near
Winchelsea give me rest.
At Niagara William Terriss slipped and nearly lost his life. At night
when he appeared as Bassanio, he shrugged his shoulders, lowered his
eyelids, and said to me--
"Nearly gone, dear,"--he would call everybody "dear"--"But Bill's luck!
Tempus fugit!"
What tempus had to do with it, I don't quite know!
When we were first in Canada I tobogganed at Rosedale. I should say it
was like flying! The start! Amazing! "Farewell to this world," I
thought, as I felt my breath go. Then I shut my mouth, opened my eyes,
and found myself at the bottom of the hill in a jiffy--"over hill, over
dale, through bush, through briar!" I rolled right out of the toboggan
when we stopped. A very nice Canadian man was my escort, and he helped
me up the hill afterwards. I didn't like _that_ part of the affair quite
so much.
Henry Irving would not come, much to my disappointment. He said that
quick motion through the air always gave him the ear-ache. He had to
give up swimming (his old Cornish Aunt Penberthy told me he delighted in
swimming as a boy) just because it gave him most violent pains in the
ear.
Philadelphia, as I first knew it, was the most old-world place I saw in
America, except perhaps Salem. Its redbrick side-walks, the trees in the
streets, the low houses with their white marble cuffs and collars, the
pretty design of the place, all give it a character of its own. The
people, too, have a character of their own. They dress, or at least
_did_ dress, very quietly. This was the only sign of their Quaker
origin, except a very fastidious taste--in plays as in other things.
Mrs. Gillespie, the great-grandchild of Benjamin Franklin, was one of my
earliest Philadelphia friends--a splendid type of the independent woman,
a bit of the martinet, but immensely full of kindness and humor. She had
a word to say in all Philadelphian matters. It would be difficult to
imagine a greater contrast to Mrs. Gillespie of Philadelphia than Mrs.
Fields of Boston, that other great American lady whom to know is a
liberal education.
Mrs. Fields reminded me of Lady Tennyson, Mrs. Tom Taylor, and Miss
Hogarth (Dickens's sister-in-law) all rolled into one. Her house is full
of relics of the past. There is a portrait of Dickens as a young man
with long hair. He had a feminine face in those days, for all its
strength. Hard by is a sketch of Keats by Severn, with a lock of the
poet's hair. Opposite is a head of Thackeray, with a note in his
handwriting fastened below. "Good-bye, Mrs. Fields; good-bye, my dear
Fields; good-bye to all. I go home."
Thackeray left Boston abruptly because a sudden desire to see his
children had assailed him at Christmas time!
As you sit in Mrs. Field's spacious room overlooking the Bay, you
realize suddenly that before you ever came into it, Dickens and
Thackeray were both here, that this beautiful old lady who so kindly
smiles on you has smiled on them and on many other great men of letters
long since dead. It is here that they seem most alive. This is the house
where the culture of Boston seems no fad to make a joke about, but a
rare and delicate reality.
This--and Fen Court, the home of that wonderful woman Mrs. Jack
Gardiner, who represents the present worship of beauty in Boston as Mrs.
Fields represents its former worship of literary men. Fen Court is a
house of enchantment, a palace, and Mrs. Gardiner is like a great
princess in it. She has "great possessions" indeed, but her best, to my
mind, is her most beautiful voice, even though I remember her garden by
moonlight with the fountain playing, her books and her pictures, the
Sargent portrait of herself presiding over one of the most splendid of
those splendid rooms, where everything great in old art and new art is
represented. What a portrait it is! Some one once said of Sargent that
"behind the individual he finds the real, and behind the real, a whole
social order."
He has painted "Mrs. Jack" in a tight-fitting black dress with no
ornament but her world-famed pearl necklace round her waist, and on her
shoes rubies like drops of blood. The daring, intellectual face seems to
say: "I have possessed everything that is worth possession, through the
energy and effort and labor of the country in which I was born."
Mrs. Gardiner represents all the _poetry_ of the millionaire.
Mrs. Gardiner's house filled me with admiration, but if I want rest and
peace I just think of the houses of Mrs. James Fields and Oliver Wendell
Holmes. He was another personage in Boston life when I first went there.
Oh, the visits I inflicted on him--yet he always seemed pleased to see
me, the cheery, kind man. It was generally winter when I called on him.
At once it was "four feet upon a fender!" Four feet upon a fender was
his idea of happiness, he told me, during one of these lengthy visits of
mine to his house in Beacon Street.
He came to see us in "Much Ado about Nothing" and, next day sent me some
little volumes of his work with a lovely inscription on the front page.
I miss him very much when I go to Boston now.
In New York, how much I miss Mrs. Beecher I could never say. The
Beechers were the most wonderful pair. What an actor he would have made!
He read scenes from Shakespeare to Henry and me at luncheon one day. He
sat next to his wife, and they held hands nearly all the while; I
thought of that time when the great preacher was tried, and all through
the trial his wife showed the world her faith in his innocence by
sitting by his side and holding his hand.
He was indeed a great preacher. I have a little faded card in my
possession now: "Mrs. Henry W. Beecher." "Will ushers of Plymouth Church
please seat the bearer in the Pastor's pew." And in the Pastor's pew I
sat, listening to that magnificent bass-viol voice with its persuasive
low accent, its torrential scorn! After the sermon I went to the
Beechers' home. Mr. Beecher sat with a saucer of uncut gems by him on
the table. He ran his hand through them from time to time, held them up
to the light, admiring them and speaking of their beauty and color as
eloquently as an hour before he had spoken of sin and death and
redemption.
He asked me to choose a stone, and I selected an aquamarine, and he had
it splendidly mounted for me in Venetian style to wear in "The Merchant
of Venice." Once when he was ill, he told me, his wife had some few
score of his jewels set up in lead--a kind of small stained-glass
window--and hung up opposite his bed. "It did me more good than the
doctor's visits," he laughed out!
Mrs. Beecher was very remarkable. She had a way of lowering her head and
looking at you with a strange intentness--gravely--kindly and quietly.
At her husband she looked a world of love, of faith, of undying
devotion. She was fond of me, although I was told she disliked women
generally and had been brought up to think all actresses children of
Satan. Obedience to the iron rules which had always surrounded her had
endowed her with extraordinary self-control. She would not allow herself
ever to feel heat or cold, and could stand any pain or discomfort
without a word of complaint.
She told me once that when she and her sister were children, a friend
had given them some lovely bright blue silk, and as the material was so
fine they thought they would have it made up a little more smartly than
was usual in their somber religious home. In spite of their father's
hatred of gaudy clothes, they ventured on a little "V" at the neck,
hardly showing more than the throat; but still, in a household where
blue silk itself was a crime, it was a bold venture. They put on the
dresses for the first time for five o'clock dinner, stole downstairs
with trepidation, rather late, and took their seats as usual one on each
side of their father. He was eating soup and never looked up. The little
sisters were relieved. He was not going to say anything.
No, he was not going to say anything, but suddenly he took a ladleful of
the hot soup and dashed it over the neck of one sister; another ladleful
followed quickly on the neck of the other.
"Oh, father, you've burned my neck!"
"Oh, father, you've spoiled my dress!"
"Oh, father, why did you do that?"
"I thought you might be cold," said the severe father
significantly--malevolently.
That a woman who had been brought up like this should form a friendship
with me naturally caused a good deal of talk. But what did she care! She
remained my true friend until her death, and wrote to me constantly when
I was in England--such loving, wise letters, full of charity and simple
faith. In 1889, after her husband's death, I wrote to her and sent my
picture, and she replied:
"My darling Nellie,--
"You cannot know how it soothes my extreme heart-loneliness to receive a
token of remembrance, and word of cheer from those I have faithfully
loved, and who knew and reverenced my husband.... Ellen Terry is very
sweet as Ellaline, but dearer far as my Nellie."
The Daly players were a revelation to me of the pitch of excellence
which American acting had reached. My first night at Daly's was a night
of enchantment. I wrote to Mr. Daly and said: "You've got a girl in your
company who is the most lovely, humorous darling I have ever seen on the
stage." It was Ada Rehan! Now of course I didn't "discover" her or any
rubbish of that kind; the audience were already mad about her, but I did
know her for what she was, even in that brilliant "all-star" company and
before she had played in the classics and won enduring fame. The
audacious, superb, quaint, Irish creature! Never have I seen such
splendid high comedy! Then the charm of her voice--a little like Ethel
Barrymore's when Miss Ethel is speaking very nicely--her smiles and
dimples, and provocative, inviting _coquetterie_! Her Rosalind, her
Country Wife, her Helena, her performance in "The Railroad of Love"! And
above all, her Katherine in "The Taming of the Shrew"! I can only
exclaim, not explain! Directly she came on I knew how she was going to
do the part. She had such shy, demure fun. She understood, like all
great comedians, that you must not pretend to be serious so sincerely
that no one in the audience sees through it!
As a woman off the stage Ada Rehan was even more wonderful than as a
shrew on. She had a touch of dignity, of nobility, of beauty, rather
like Eleonora Duse's. The mouth and the formation of the eye were
lovely. Her guiltlessness of make-up off the stage was so attractive!
She used to come in to a supper with a lovely shining face which scorned
a powder puff. The only thing one missed was the red hair which seemed
such a part of her on the stage.
Here is a dear letter from the dear, written in 1890:
"My dear Miss Terry,--
"Of course the first thing I was to do when I reached Paris was to write
and thank you for your lovely red feathers. One week is gone. To-day it
rains and I am compelled to stay at home, and at last I write. I thought
you had forgotten me and my feathers long ago. So imagine my delight
when they came at the very end. I liked it so. It seemed as if I lived
all the time in your mind: and they came as a good-bye.
"I saw but little of you, but in that little I found no change. That was
gratifying to me, for I am over-sensitive, and would never trouble you
if you had forgotten me. How I shall prize those feathers--Henry
Irving's, presented by Ellen Terry to me for my Rosalind Cap. I shall
wear them once and then put them by as treasures. Thank you so much for
the pretty words you wrote me about 'As You Like It.' I was hardly fit
on that matinŽe. The great excitement I went through during the London
season almost killed me. I am going to try and rest, but I fear my
nerves and heart won't let me.
"You must try and read between the lines all I feel. I am sure you can
if any one ever did, but I cannot put into words my admiration for
you--and that comes from deep down in my heart. Good-bye, with all good
wishes for your health and success.
"I remain
"Yours most affectionately,
"ADA REHAN."
I wish I could just once have played with Ada Rehan. When Mr. Tree could
not persuade Mrs. Kendal to come and play in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" a second time, I hoped that Ada Rehan would come and rollick
with me as Mrs. Ford--but it was not to be.
Mr. Daly himself interested me greatly. He was an excellent manager, a
man in a million. But he had no artistic sense. The productions of
Shakespeare at Daly's were really bad from the pictorial point of view.
But what pace and "ensemble" he got from his company!
May Irwin was the low comedian who played the servants' parts in Daly's
comedies from the German. I might describe her, except that she was far
more genial, as a kind of female Rutland Barrington. On and off the
stage her geniality distinguished her like a halo. It is a rare quality
on the stage, yet without it the comedian has uphill work. I should say
that May Irwin and J.B. Buckstone (the English actor and manager of the
Haymarket Theater during the 'sixties) had it equally. Generous May
Irwin! Lucky those who have her warm friendship and jolly, kind
companionship!
John Drew, the famous son of a famous mother, was another Daly player
whom I loved. With what loyalty he supported Ada Rehan! He never played
for his own hand but for the good of the piece. His mother, Mrs. John
Drew, had the same quiet methods as Mrs. Alfred Wigan. Everything that
she did told. I saw Mrs. Drew play Mrs. Malaprop, and it was a lesson to
people who overact. Her daughter, Georgie Drew, Ethel Barrymore's
mother, was also a charming actress. Maurice Barrymore was a brilliantly
clever actor. Little Ethel, as I still call her, though she is a big
"star," is carrying on the family traditions. She ought to play Lady
Teazle. She may take it from me that she would make a success in it.
Modjeska, who, though she is a Polish actress, lives in America and is
associated with the American stage, made a great impression on me. She
was exquisite in many parts, but in none finer than in "Adrienne
Lecouvreur." Her last act electrified me. I have never seen it better
acted, although I have seen all the great ones do it since. Her Marie
Stuart, too, was a beautiful and distinguished performance. Her Juliet
had lovely moments, but I did not so much care for that, and her broken
English interfered with the verse of Shakespeare. Some years ago I met
Modjeska and she greeted me so warmly and sweetly, although she was very
ill.
During my more recent tours in America Maude Adams is the actress of
whom I have seen most, and "to see her is to love her!" In "The Little
Minister" and in "Quality Street" I think she is at her best, but above
all parts she herself is most adorable. She is just worshiped in
America, and has an extraordinary effect--an _educational_ effect upon
all American girlhood.
I never saw Mary Anderson act. That seems a strange admission, but
during her wonderful reign at the Lyceum Theater, which she rented from
Henry Irving, I was in America, and another time when I might have seen
her act I was very ill and ordered abroad. I have, however, had the
great pleasure of meeting her, and she has done me many little
kindnesses. Hearing her praises sung on all sides, and her beauties
spoken of everywhere, I was particularly struck by her modest evasion of
publicity _off_ the stage. I personally only knew her as a most
beautiful woman--as kind as beautiful--constantly working for her
religion--_always_ kind, a good daughter, a good wife, a good woman.
She cheered me before I first sailed for America by saying that her
people would like me.
"Since seeing you in Portia and Letitia," she wrote, "I am convinced you
will take America by storm." Certainly _she_ took _England_ by storm!
But she abandoned her triumphs almost as soon as they were gained. They
never made her happy, she once told me, and I could understand her
better than most since I had had success too, and knew that it did not
mean happiness. I have a letter from her, written from St. Raphael soon
after her marriage. It is nice to think that she is just as happy now as
she was then--that she made no mistake when she left the stage, where
she had such a brief and brilliant career.
"GRAND HOTEL DE VALESCURE,
"ST. RAPHAEL, FRANCE.
"Dear Miss Terry,--
"I am saying all kinds of fine things about your beautiful work in my
book--which will appear shortly; but I cannot remember the name of the
small part you made so attractive in the 'Lyons Mail.' It was the first
one I had seen you in, and I wish to write my delightful impressions of
it.
"Will you be so very kind as to tell me the name of your character and
the two Mr. Irving acted so wonderfully in that play?
"There is a brilliant blue sea before my windows, with purple mountains
as a background and silver-topped olives and rich green pines in the
middle distance. I wish you could drop down upon us in this golden land
for a few days' holiday from your weary work.
"I would like to tell you what a big darling my husband is, and how
perfectly happy he makes my life--but there's no use trying.
"The last time we met I promised you a photo--here it is! One of my
latest! And won't you send me one of yours in private dress? DO!
"Forgive me for troubling you, and believe me your admirer
"MARY ANDERSON DE NAVARRO."
Henry and I were so fortunate as to gain the friendship and approval of
Dr. Horace Howard Furness, perhaps the finest Shakespearean scholar in
America, and editor of the "Variorum Shakespeare," which Henry
considered the best of all editions--"the one which counts." It was in
Boston, I think, that I disgraced myself at one of Dr. Furness's
lectures. He was discussing "As You Like It" and Rosalind, and proving
with much elaboration that English in Shakespeare's time was pronounced
like a broad country dialect, and that Rosalind spoke Warwickshire! A
little girl who was sitting in the row in front of me had lent me her
copy of the play a moment before, and now, absorbed in Dr. Furness's
argument, I forgot the book wasn't mine and began scrawling
controversial notes in it with my very thick and blotty fountain pen.
"Give me back my book! Give me my book!" screamed the little girl. "How
dare you write in my book!" She began to cry with rage.
Her mother tried to hush her up: "Don't, darling. Be quiet! It's Miss
Ellen Terry."
"I don't care! She's spoilt my nice book!"
I am glad to say that when the little girl understood, she forgave me;
and the spoilt book is treasured very much by a tall Boston young lady
of eighteen who has replaced the child of seven years ago! Still, it was
dreadful of me, and I did feel ashamed at the time.
I saw "As You Like It" acted in New York once with every part (except
the man who let down the curtain) played by a woman, and it was
extraordinarily well done. The most remarkable bit of acting was by
Janauschek, who played Jacques. I have never heard the speech beginning
"All the world's a stage" delivered more finely, not even by Phelps, who
was fine in the part.
Mary Shaw's Rosalind was good, and the Silvius (who played it, now?) was
charming.
Unfortunately that one man, poor creature (no wonder he was nervous!),
spoiled the end of the play by failing to ring down the curtain, at
which the laughter was immoderate! Janauschek used to do a little sketch
from the German called "Come Here!" which I afterwards did in England.
In November, 1901, I wrote in my diary: "_Philadelphia._--Supper at
Henry's. Jefferson there, sweeter and more interesting than ever--and
younger."
Dear Joe Jefferson--actor, painter, courteous gentleman, _profound_
student of Shakespeare! When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was
raging in America (it really _did_ rage there!) Jefferson wrote the most
delicious doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule killed the
Bacon enthusiasts all the more dead because it was barbed with
erudition.
He said that when I first came into the box to see him as "Rip" he
thought I did not like him, because I fidgeted and rustled and moved my
place, as is my wicked way. "But I'll get her, and I'll hold her," he
said to himself. I was held indeed--enthralled.
In manner Jefferson was a little like Norman Forbes-Robertson. Perhaps
that was why the two took such a fancy to each other. When Norman was
walking with Jefferson one day, some one who met them said:
"Your son?"
"No," said Jefferson, "but I wish he were! The young man has such good
manners!"
Our first American tours were in 1883 and 1884; the third in 1887-88,
the year of the great blizzard. Henry fetched us at half-past ten in the
morning! His hotel was near the theater where we were to play at night.
He said the weather was stormy, and we had better make for his hotel
while there was time! The German actor Ludwig Barnay was to open in New
York that night, but the blizzard affected his nerves to such an extent
that he did not appear at all, and returned to Germany directly the
weather improved!