although there was a famine in the town and the streets were impassable.
The cold was intense. Henry sent Walter out to buy some violets for
Barnay, and when he brought them in to the dressing room--he had only
carried them a few yards--they were frozen so hard that they could have
been chipped with a hammer!
We rang up on "Faust" three-quarters of an hour late! This was not bad
considering all things. Although the house was sold out, there was
hardly any audience, and only a harp and two violins in the orchestra.
Discipline was so strong in the Lyceum company that every member of it
reached the theater by eight o'clock, although some of them had had to
walk from Brooklyn Bridge.
The Mayor of New York and his daughter managed to reach their box
somehow. Then we thought it was time to begin. Some members of Daly's
company, including John Drew, came in, and a few friends. It was the
oddest, scantiest audience! But the enthusiasm was terrific!
Five years went by before we visited America again. Five years in a
country of rapid changes is a long time, long enough for friends to
forget! But they didn't forget. This time we made new friends, too, in
the Far West. We went to San Francisco, among other places. We attended
part of a performance at the Chinese theater. Oh, those rows of
impenetrable faces gazing at the stage with their long, shining,
inexpressive eyes! What a look of the everlasting the Chinese have! "We
have been before you--we shall be after you," they seem to say.
Just as we were getting interested in the play, the interpreter rose and
hurried us out. Something that was not for the ears of women was being
said, but we did not know it!
The chief incident of the fifth American tour was our production at
Chicago of Laurence Irving's one-act play "Godefroi and Yolande." I
regard that little play as an inspiration. By instinct the young author
did everything right. The Chicago folk, in spite of the unpleasant theme
of the play, recognized the genius of it, and received it splendidly.
In 1901 I was ill, and hated the parts I was playing in America. The
Lyceum was not what it had been. Everything was changed.
In 1907--only the other day--I toured in America for the first time on
my own account--playing modern plays for the first time. I made new
friends and found my old ones still faithful.
But this tour was chiefly momentous to me because at Pittsburg I was
married for the third time, and married to an American. My marriage was
my own affair, but very few people seemed to think so, and I was
overwhelmed with "inquiries," kind and otherwise. Kindness and loyalty
won the day. "If any one deserves to be happy, you do," many a friend
wrote. Well, I am happy, and while I am happy, I cannot feel old.
XIII
THE MACBETH PERIOD
Perhaps Henry Irving and I might have gone on with Shakespeare to the
end of the chapter if he had not been in such a hurry to produce
"Macbeth."
We ought to have done "As You Like It" in 1888, or "The Tempest." Henry
thought of both these plays. He was much attracted by the part of
Caliban in "The Tempest," but, he said, "the young lovers are
everything, and where are we going to find them?" He would have played
Touchstone in "As You Like It," not Jacques, because Touchstone is in
the vital part of the play.
He might have delayed both "Macbeth" and "Henry VIII." He ought to have
added to his list of Shakespearean productions "Julius Caesar," "King
John," "As You Like It," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Richard II.," and
"Timon of Athens." There were reasons "against," of course. In "Julius
Caesar" he wanted to play Brutus. "That's the part for the actor," he
said, "because it needs acting. But the actor-manager's part is
Antony--Antony scores all along the line. Now when the actor and
actor-manager fight in a play, and when there is no part for you in it,
I think it's wiser to leave it alone."
Every one knows when the luck first began to turn against Henry Irving.
It was in 1896 when he revived "Richard III." On the first night he
went home, slipped on the stairs in Grafton Street, broke a bone in his
knee, aggravated the hurt by walking on it, and had to close the
theater. It was that year, too, that his general health began to fail.
For the ten years preceding his death he carried on an indomitable
struggle against ill-health. Lungs and heart alike were weak. Only the
spirit in that frail body remained as strong as ever. Nothing could bend
it, much less break it.
But I have not come to that sad time yet.
"We all know when we do our best," said Henry once. "We are the only
people who know." Yet he thought he did better in "Macbeth" than in
"Hamlet"!
Was he right after all?
His _view_ of "Macbeth," though attacked and derided and put to shame in
many quarters, is as clear to me as the sunlight itself. To me it seems
as stupid to quarrel with the conception as to deny the nose on one's
face. But the carrying out of the conception was unequal. Henry's
imagination was sometimes his worst enemy.
When I think of his "Macbeth," I remember him most distinctly in the
last act after the battle when he looked like a great famished wolf,
weak with the weakness of a giant exhausted, spent as one whose
exertions have been ten times as great as those of commoner men of
rougher fiber and coarser strength.
"Of all men else I have avoided thee."
Once more he suggested, as he only could suggest, the power of Fate.
Destiny seemed to hang over him, and he knew that there was no hope, no
mercy.
The rehearsals for "Macbeth" were very exhausting, but they were
splendid to watch. In this play Henry brought his manipulation of crowds
to perfection. My acting edition of the play is riddled with rough
sketches by him of different groups. Artists to whom I have shown them
have been astonished by the spirited impressionism of these sketches.
For his "purpose" Henry seems to have been able to do anything, even to
drawing, and composing music! Sir Arthur Sullivan's music at first did
not quite please him. He walked up and down the stage humming, and
showing the composer what he was going to do at certain situations.
Sullivan, with wonderful quickness and open-mindedness, caught his
meaning at once.
"Much better than mine, Irving--much better--I'll rough it out at once!"
When the orchestra played the new version, based on that humming of
Henry's, it was exactly what he wanted!
Knowing what a task I had before me, I began to get anxious and worried
about "Lady Mac." Henry wrote me such a nice letter about this:
"To-night, if possible, the last act. I want to get these great
multitudinous scenes over and then we can attack _our_ scenes....
Your sensitiveness is so acute that you must suffer sometimes. You
are not like anybody else--see things with such lightning quickness
and unerring instinct that dull fools like myself grow irritable
and impatient sometimes. I feel confused when I'm thinking of one
thing, and disturbed by another. That's all. But I do feel very
sorry afterwards when I don't seem to heed what I so much value....
"I think things are going well, considering the time we've been at
it, but I see so much that is wanting that it seems almost
impossible to get through properly. 'To-night commence, Matthias.
If you sleep, you are lost!'"[1]
[Footnote 1: A quotation from "The Bells."]
At this time we were able to be of the right use to each other. Henry
could never have worked with a very strong woman. I might have
deteriorated, in partnership with a weaker man whose ends were less
fine, whose motives were less pure. I had the taste and artistic
knowledge that his upbringing had not developed in him. For years he did
things to please me. Later on I gave up asking him. In "King Lear" Mrs.
Nettleship made him a most beautiful cloak, but he insisted on wearing a
brilliant purple velvet cloak with spangles all over it which swamped
his beautiful make-up and his beautiful acting. Poor Mrs. Nettleship was
almost in tears.
"I'll never make you anything again--never!"
One of Mrs. "Nettle's" greatest triumphs was my Lady Macbeth dress,
which she carried out from Mrs. Comyns Carr's design. I am glad to think
it is immortalized in Sargent's picture. From the first I knew that
picture was going to be splendid. In my diary for 1888 I was always
writing about it:
"The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it magnificent.
The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as
Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful.
"Henschel is sitting to Sargent. His concerts, I hear, can't be
carried on another year for want of funds. What a shame!
"Mr. Sargent is painting a head of Henry--very good, but mean about
the chin at present.
"Sargent's picture is talked of everywhere and quarreled about as
much as my way of playing the part.
"Sargent's 'Lady Macbeth' in the New Gallery is a great success.
The picture is the sensation of the year. Of course opinions differ
about it, but there are dense crowds round it day after day. There
is talk of putting it on exhibition by itself."
Since then it has gone over nearly the whole of Europe, and now is
resting for life at the Tate Gallery. Sargent suggested by this picture
all that I should have liked to be able to convey in my acting as Lady
Macbeth.
_My Diary._--"Everybody hates Sargent's head of Henry. Henry also.
I like it, but not altogether. I think it perfectly wonderfully
painted and like him, only not at his best by any means. There sat
Henry and there by his side the picture, and I could scarce tell
one from t'other. Henry looked white, with tired eyes, and holes in
his cheeks and bored to death! And there was the picture with white
face, tired eyes, holes in the cheeks and boredom in every line.
Sargent tried to paint his smile and gave it up."
Sargent said to me, I remember, upon Henry Irving's first visit to the
studio to see the Macbeth picture of me, "What a Saint!" This to my mind
promised well--that Sargent should see _that_ side of Henry so swiftly.
So then I never left off asking Henry to sit to Sargent, who wanted to
paint him too, and said to me continually, "What a head!"
_From my Diary._--"Sargent's picture is almost finished, and it is
really splendid. Burne-Jones yesterday suggested two or three
alterations about the color which Sargent immediately adopted, but
Burne-Jones raves about the picture.
"It ('Macbeth') is a most tremendous success, and the last three
days' advance booking has been greater than ever was known, even at
the Lyceum. Yes, it is a success, and I am a success, which amazes
me, for never did I think I should be let down so easily. Some
people hate me in it; some, Henry among them, think it my best
part, and the critics differ, and discuss it hotly, which in itself
is my best success of all! Those who don't like me in it are those
who don't want, and don't like to read it fresh from Shakespeare,
and who hold by the 'fiend' reading of the character.... One of the
best things ever written on the subject, I think, is the essay of
J. Comyns Carr. That is as hotly discussed as the new 'Lady
Mac'--all the best people agreeing with it. Oh, dear! It is an
exciting time!"
From a letter I wrote to my daughter, who was in Germany at the time:
"I wish you could see my dresses. They are superb, especially the
first one: green beetles on it, and such a cloak! The photographs
give no idea of it at all, for it is in color that it is so
splendid. The dark red hair is fine. The whole thing is
Rossetti--rich stained-glass effects, I play some of it well, but,
of course, I don't do what I want to do yet. Meanwhile I shall not
budge an inch in the reading of it, for that I know is right. Oh,
it's fun, but it's precious hard work for I by no means make her a
'gentle, lovable woman' as some of 'em say. That's all pickles. She
was nothing of the sort, although she was _not_ a fiend, and _did_
love her husband. I have to what is vulgarly called 'sweat at it,'
each night."
The few people who liked my Lady Macbeth, liked it very much. I hope I
am not vain to quote this letter from Lady Pollock:
"... Burne-Jones has been with me this afternoon: he was at
'Macbeth' last night, and you filled his whole soul with your
beauty and your poetry.... He says you were a great Scandinavian
queen; that your presence, your voice, your movement made a
marvelously poetic harmony; that your dress was grandly imagined
and grandly worn--and that he cannot criticize--he can only
remember."
But Burne-Jones by this time had become one of our most ardent admirers,
and was prejudiced in my favor because my acting appealed to his _eye_.
Still, the drama is for the eye as well as for the ear and the mind.
Very early I learned that one had best be ambitious merely to please
oneself in one's work a little--quietly. I coupled with this the
reflection that one "gets nothing for nothing, and damned little for
sixpence!"
Here I was in the very noonday of life, fresh from Lady Macbeth and
still young enough to play Rosalind, suddenly called upon to play a
rather uninteresting mother in "The Dead Heart." However, my son Teddy
made his first appearance in it, and had such a big success that I soon
forgot that for me the play was rather "small beer."
It had been done before, of course, by Benjamin Webster and George
Vining. Henry engaged Bancroft for the AbbŽ, a part of quite as much
importance as his own. It was only a melodrama, but Henry could always
invest a melodrama with life, beauty, interest, mystery, by his methods
of production.
"I'm full of French Revolution," he wrote to me when he was
preparing the play for rehearsal, "and could pass an examination.
In our play, at the taking of the Bastile we must have a starving
crowd--hungry, eager, cadaverous faces. If that can be well carried
out, the effect will be very terrible, and the contrast to the
other crowd (the red and fat crowd--the blood-gorged ones who look
as if they'd been all drinking wine--_red_ wine, as Dickens says)
would be striking.... It's tiresome stuff to read, because it
depends so much on situations. I have been touching the book up
though, and improved it here and there, I think.
"A letter this morning from the illustrious Blank offering me his
prompt book to look at.... I think I shall borrow the treasure. Why
not? Of course he will say that he has produced the play and all
that sort of thing; but what does that matter, if one can only get
one hint out of it?
"The longer we live, the more we see that if we only do our own
work thoroughly well, we can be independent of everything else or
anything that may be said....
"I see in Landry a great deal of Manette--that same vacant gaze
into years gone by when he crouched in his dungeon nursing his
wrongs....
"I shall send you another book soon to put any of your alterations
and additions in. I've added a lot of little things with a few
lines for you--very good, I think, though I say it as shouldn't--I
know you'll laugh! They are perhaps not startling original, but
better than the original, anyhow! Here they are--last act!
"'Ah, Robert, pity me. By the recollections of our youth, I implore
you to save my boy!' (_Now_ for 'em!)
"'If my voice recalls a tone that ever fell sweetly upon your ear,
have pity on me! If the past is not a blank, if you once loved,
have pity on me!' (Bravo!)
"Now I call that very good, and if the 'If and the 'pitys' don't
bring down the house, well it's a pity! I pity the pittites!
"... I've just been copying out my part in an account book--a
little more handy to put in one's pocket. It's really very short,
but difficult to act, though, and so is yours. I like this 'piling
up' sort of acting, and I am sure you will, when you play the part.
It's restful. 'The Bells' is that sort of thing."
The crafty old Henry! All this was to put me in conceit with my part!
Many people at this time put me in conceit with my son, including dear
Burne-Jones with his splendid gift of impulsive enthusiasm.
"THE GRANGE,
"WEST KENSINGTON, W.
"_Sunday._
"Most Dear Lady,--
"I thought all went wonderfully last night, and no sign could I see of
hitch or difficulty; and as for your boy, he looked a lovely little
gentleman--and in his cups was perfect, not overdoing by the least touch
a part always perilously easy to overdo. I too had the impertinence to
be a bit nervous for you about him, but not when he appeared--so
altogether I was quite happy.
"... Irving was very noble--I thought I had never seen his face so
beautified before--no, that isn't the word, and to hunt for the right
one would be so like judicious criticism that I won't. Exalted and
splendid it was--and you were you--YOU--and so all was well. I rather
wanted more shouting and distant roar in the Bastille Scene--since the
walls fell, like Jericho, by noise. A good dreadful growl always going
on would have helped, I thought--and that was the only point where I
missed anything.
"And I was very glad you got your boy back again and that Mr. Irving was
ready to have his head cut off for you; so it had what I call a good
ending, and I am in bright spirits to-day, and ever
"Your real friend,
"E.B.-J."
"I would come and growl gladly."
There were terrible strikes all over England when we were playing "The
Dead Heart." I could not help sympathizing with the strikers ... yet
reading all about the French Revolution as I did then, I can't
understand how the French nation can be proud of it when one remembers
how they butchered their own great men, the leaders of the
movement--Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre and the others. My man
is Camille Desmoulins. I just love him.
Plays adapted from novels are generally unsatisfactory. A whole story
cannot be conveyed in three hours, and every reader of the story looks
for something not in the play. Wills took from "The Vicar of Wakefield"
an episode and did it right well, but there was no _episode_ in "The
Bride of Lammermoor" for Merivale to take. He tried to traverse the
whole ground, and failed. But he gave me some lovely things to do in
Lucy Ashton. I had to lose my poor wits, as in Ophelia, in the last act,
and with hardly a word to say I was able to make an effect. The love
scene at the well I did nicely too.
Seymour Lucas designed splendid dresses for this play. My "Ravenswood"
riding dress set a fashion in ladies' coats for quite a long time. Mine
was copied by Mr. Lucas from a leather coat of Lord Mohun's. He is said
to have had it on when he was killed. At any rate there was a large stab
in the back of the coat, and a blood-stain.
This was my first speculation in play-buying! I saw it acted, and
thought I could do something with it. Henry would not buy it, so I did!
He let me do it first in front of a revival of "The Corsican Brothers"
in 1891. It was a great success, although my son and I did not know a
word on the first night and had our parts written out and pinned all
over the furniture on the stage! Dear old Mr. Howe wrote to me that
Teddy's performance was "more than creditable; it was exceedingly good
and full of character, and with your own charming performance the piece
was a great success." Since 1891 I must have played "Nance Oldfield"
hundreds of times, but I never had an Alexander Oldworthy so good as my
own son, although such talented young actors as Martin Harvey, Laurence
Irving and, more recently, Harcourt Williams have all played it with me.
Henry's pride as Cardinal Wolsey seemed to eat him. How wonderful he
looked (though not fat and self-indulgent like the pictures of the real
Wolsey) in his flame-colored robes! He had the silk dyed specially by
the dyers to the Cardinal's College in Rome. Seymour Lucas designed the
clothes. It was a magnificent production, but not very interesting to
me. I played Katherine much better ten years later at Stratford-on-Avon
at the Shakespeare Memorial Festival. I was stronger then, and more
reposeful. This letter from Burne-Jones about "Henry VIII." is a
delightful tribute to Henry Irving's treatment of the play:
"My Dear Lady,--
"We went last night to the play (at my theater) to see Henry
VIII.--Margaret and Mackail and I. It was delicious to go out again and
see mankind, after such evil days. How kind they were to me no words can
say--I went in at a private door and then into a cosy box and back the
same way, swiftly, and am marvelously the better for the adventure. No
YOU, alas!
"I have written to Mr. Irving just to thank him for his great kindness
in making the path of pleasure so easy, for I go tremblingly at present.
But I could not say to him what I thought of the Cardinal--a sort of
shame keeps one from saying to an artist what one thinks of his
work--but to you I can say how nobly he warmed up the story of the old
religion to my exacting mind in that impersonation. I shall think always
of dying monarchy in his Charles--and always of dying hierarchy in his
Wolsey. How Protestant and dull all grew when that noble type had gone!
"I can't go to church till red cardinals come back (and may they be of
exactly that red) nor to Court till trumpets and banners come back--nor
to evening parties till the dances are like that dance. What a lovely
young Queen has been found. But there was no YOU.... Perhaps it was as
well. I couldn't have you slighted even in a play, and put aside. When
I go back to see you, as I soon will, it will be easier. Mr. Irving let
me know you would not act, and proposed that I should go later
on--wasn't that like him? So I sat with my children and was right happy;
and, as usual, the streets looked dirty, and all the people muddy and
black as we came away. Please not to answer this stuff.
"Ever yours affectionately,
"E.B.-J.
"--I wish that Cardinal could have been made Pope, and sat with his foot
on the Earl of Surrey's neck. Also I wish to be a Cardinal; but then I
sometimes want to be a pirate. We can't have all we want.
"Your boy was very kind--I thought the race of young men who are polite
and attentive to old fading ones had passed away with antique
pageants--but it isn't so."
When the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire gave the famous fancy dress
ball at Devonshire House, Henry attended it in the robes which had
appealed so strongly to Burne-Jones's imaginative eye. I was told by one
who was present at this ball that as the Cardinal swept up the
staircase, his long train held magnificently over his arm, a sudden wave
of reality seemed to sweep upstairs with him, and reduce to the
prettiest make-believe all the aristocratic masquerade that surrounded
him.
I renewed my acquaintance with "Henry VIII." in 1902, when I played
Queen Katherine for Mr. Benson during the Shakespeare Memorial
performances in April. I was pretty miserable at the time--the Lyceum
reign was dying, and taking an unconscionably long time about it, which
made the position all the more difficult. Henry Irving was reviving
"Faust"--a wise step, as it had been his biggest "money-maker"--and it
was impossible that I could play Margaret. There are some young parts
that the actress can still play when she is no longer young: Beatrice,
Portia, and many others come to mind. But I think that when the
character is that of a young girl the betrayal of whose innocence is the
main theme of the play, no amount of skill on the part of the actress
can make up for the loss of youth.
Suggestions were thrown out to me (not by Henry Irving, but by others
concerned) that although I was too old for Margaret, I might play
_Martha_! Well! well! I didn't quite see _that_. So I redeemed a promise
given in jest at the Lyceum to Frank Benson twenty years earlier, and
went off to Stratford-upon-Avon to play in Henry VIII.
Mr. Benson was wonderful to work with. "I am proud to think," he wrote
me just before our few rehearsals began, "that I have trained my folk
(as I was taught by my elders and betters at the Lyceum) to be pretty
quick at adapting themselves to anything that may be required of them,
so that you need not be uneasy as to their not fitting in with your
business."
"My folk," as Mr. Benson called them, were excellent, especially Surrey
(Harcourt Williams), Norfolk (Matheson Lang), Caperius (Fitzgerald), and
Griffith (Nicholson). "Harcourt Williams," I wrote in my diary on the
day of the dress-rehearsal, "will be heard of very shortly. He played
Edgar in 'Lear' much better than Terriss, although not so good an actor
yet."
I played Katherine on Shakespeare's Birthday--such a lovely day, bright
and sunny and warm. The performance went finely--and I made a little
speech afterwards which was quite a success. I was presented publicly on
the stage with the Certificate of Governorship of the Memorial Theater.