details of my jubilee performance at Drury Lane were being arranged, the
Committee decided to ask certain distinguished artists to contribute to
the programme. They were all delighted about it, and such busy men as
Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema, Mr. Abbey, Mr. Byam Shaw, Mr. Walter Crane,
Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. James Pryde, Mr. Orpen, and Mr. William
Nicholson all gave some of their work to me. Mr. Sargent was asked if he
would allow the first Lady Macbeth study to be reproduced. He found that
it would not reproduce well, so in the height of the season and of his
work with fashionable sitters, he did an entirely new painting of the
same subject, which _would_ reproduce! This act of kind friendship I
could never forget even if the picture were not in front of me at this
minute to remind me of it. "You must think of me as one of the people
bowing down to you in the picture," he wrote to me when he sent the new
version for the programme. Nothing during my jubilee celebrations
touched me more than this wonderful kindness of Mr. Sargent's.
Burne-Jones would have done something for my jubilee programme too, I
think, had he lived. He was one of my kindest friends, and his
letters--he was a heaven-born letter-writer--were like no one else's;
full of charm and humor and feeling. Once when I was starting for a long
tour in America he sent me a picture with this particularly charming
letter:
"THE GRANGE,
"_July 14, 1897._
"My dear Miss Terry,--
"I never have the courage to throw you a huge bouquet as I should like
to--so in default I send you a little sign of my homage and admiration.
I made it purposely for you, which is its only excellence, and thought
nothing but gold good enough to paint with for you--and now it's done, I
am woefully disappointed. It looks such a poor wretch of a thing, and
there is no time to make another before you go, so look mercifully upon
it--it did mean so well--as you would upon a foolish friend, not holding
it up to the light, but putting it in a corner and never showing it.
"As to what it is about, I think it's a little scene in Heaven (I am
always pretending to know so much about that place!), a sort of patrol
going to look to the battlements, some such thought as in Marlowe's
lovely line: 'Now walk the angels on the walls of Heaven.' But I wanted
it to be so different, and my old eyes cannot help me to finish it as I
want--so forgive it and accept it with all its accompanying crowd of
good wishes to you. They were always in my mind as I did it.
"And come back soon from that America and stay here, and never go away
again. Indeed I do wish you boundless happiness, and for our sake, such
a length of life that you might shudder if I were to say how long.
"Ever your poor artist,
"E.B.-J.
"If it is so faint that you can scarcely see it, let that stand for
modest humility and shyness--as I had only dared to whisper."
Another time, when I had sent him a trifle for some charity, he wrote:
"Dear Lady,--
"This morning came the delightful crinkly paper that always means you!
If anybody else ever used it, I think I should assault them! I certainly
wouldn't read their letter or answer it.
"And I know the check will be very useful. If I thought much about those
wretched homes, or saw them often, I should do no more work, I know.
There is but one thing to do--to help with a little money if you can
manage it, and then try hard to forget. Yes, I am certain that I should
never paint again if I saw much of those hopeless lives that have no
remedy. I know of such a dear lad about my Phil's age who has felt this
so sharply that he has given his happy, lucky, petted life to give
himself wholly to share their squalor and unlovely lives--doing all he
can, of evenings when his work is over, to amuse such as have the heart
to be amused, reading to them and telling them about histories and what
not--anything he knows that can entertain them. And this he has daily
done for about a year, and if he carries it on for his life time he
shall have such a nimbus that he will look top-heavy with it.
"No, you would always have been lovely and made some beauty about you if
you had been born there--but I should have got drunk and beaten my
family and been altogether horrible! When everything goes just as I
like, and painting prospers a bit, and the air is warm and friends well
and everything perfectly comfortable, I can just manage to behave
decently, and a spoilt fool I am--that's the truth. But wherever you
were, some garden would grow.
"Yes, I know Winchelsea and Rye and Lynn and Hythe--all bonny places,
and Hythe has a church it may be proud of. Under the sea is another
Winchelsea, a poor drowned city--about a mile out at sea, I think,
always marked in old maps as 'Winchelsea Dround.' If ever the sea goes
back on that changing coast there may be great fun when the spires and
towers come up again. It's a pretty land to drive in.
"I am growing downright stupid--I can't work at all, nor think of
anything. Will my wits ever come back to me?
"And when are you coming back--when will the Lyceum be in its rightful
hands again? I refuse to go there till you come back...."
* * * * *
"Dear Lady,--
"I have finished four pictures: come and tell me if they will do. I have
worked so long at them that I know nothing about them, but I want you to
see them--and like them if you can.
"All Saturday and Sunday and Monday they are visible. Come any time you
can that suits you best--only come.
"I do hope you will like them. If you don't you must really pretend to,
else I shall be heartbroken. And if I knew what time you would come and
which day, I would get Margaret here.
"I have had them about four years--long before I knew you, and now they
are done and I can hardly believe it. But tell me pretty pacifying lies
and say you like them, even if you find them rubbish.
"Your devoted and affectionate
"E.B.-J."
I went the next day to see the pictures with Edy. It was the "Briar
Rose" series. They were _beautiful_. The lovely Lady Granby (now Duchess
of Rutland) was there--reminding me, as always, of the reflection of
something in water on a misty day. When she was Miss Violet Lindsay she
did a drawing of me as Portia in the doctor's robes, which is I think
very like me, as well as having all the charming qualities of her
well-known pencil portraits.
The artists all loved the Lyceum, not only the old school, but the young
ones, who could have been excused for thinking that Henry Irving and I
were a couple of old fogeys! William Nicholson and James Pryde, who
began by working together as "The Beggarstaff Brothers," and in this
period did a poster of Henry for "Don Quixote" and another for "Becket,"
were as enthusiastic about the Lyceum as Burne-Jones had been. Mr. Pryde
has done an admirable portrait of me as Nance Oldfield, and his "Irving
as Dubosc" shows the most extraordinary insight.
"I have really tried to draw his _personality_" he wrote to me thanking
me for having said I liked the picture (it was done after Henry's
death).... "Irving's eyes in Dubosc always made my hair stand on end,
and I paid great attention to the fact that one couldn't exactly say
whether they were _shut_ or _open_. Very terrifying...."
Mr. Rothenstein, to whom I once sat for a lithograph, was another of the
young artists who came a good deal to the Lyceum. I am afraid that I
must be a very difficult "subject," yet I sit easily enough, and don't
mind being looked at--an objection which makes some sitters constrained
and awkward before the painter. Poor Mr. Rothenstein was much worried
over his lithograph, yet "it was all right on the night," as actors say.
"Dear Miss Terry,--
"My nights have been sleepless--my drawing sitting gibbering on my
chest. I knew how fearfully I should stumble--that is why I wanted to do
more drawings earlier. I have been working on the thing this morning,
and I believe I improved it slightly. What I want now is a cloak--the
simplest you have (perhaps the green one?), which I think would be
better than the less simple and worrying lace fallalas in the drawing. I
can put it on the lay figure and sketch it into the horror over the old
lines. I think the darker stuff will make the face blonde--more
delicate. Please understand how nervously excited I have been over the
wretched drawing, how short it falls of any suggestion of that
personality of which I cannot speak to you--which I should some day like
to give a shadow of....
"You were altogether charming and delightful and sympathetic. Perhaps if
you had looked like a bear and behaved like a harpy, who knows what I
might not have done!
"... You shall have a sight of a proof at the end of the week, if you
have any address out of town. Meanwhile I will do my best to improve the
stone.
"Always yours, dear Miss Terry,
"WILL ROTHENSTEIN."
My dear friend Graham Robertson painted two portraits of me, and I was
Mortimer Menpes' first subject in England.
Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema did the designs for the scenery and dresses in
"Cymbeline," and incidentally designed for Imogen one of the loveliest
dresses that I ever wore. It was made by Mrs. Nettleship. So were the
dresses that Burne-Jones designed for me to wear in "King Arthur."
Many of my most effective dresses have been what I may call "freaks."
The splendid dress that I wore in the Trial Scene in "Henry VIII." is
one example of what I mean. Mr. Seymour Lucas designed it, and there was
great difficulty in finding a material rich enough and somber enough at
the same time. No one was so clever on such quests as Mrs. Comyns Carr.
She was never to be misled by the appearance of the stuff in the hand,
nor impressed by its price by the yard, if she did not think it would
look right on the stage. As Katherine she wanted me to wear steely
silver and bronzy gold, but all the brocades had such insignificant
designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights
like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin
which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a
meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of
silver--just the _right_ steely silver because it was the _wrong_ side!
Mrs. Carr then started on another quest for gold that should be as right
as that silver. She found it at last in some gold-lace antimacassars at
Whiteley's! From these base materials she and Mrs. Nettleship
constructed a magnificent queenly dress. Its only fault was that it was
_heavy_.
But the weight that I can carry on the stage has often amazed me. I
remember that for "King Arthur" Mrs. Nettleship made me a splendid
cloak embroidered all over with a pattern in jewels. At the
dress-rehearsal when I made my entrance the cloak swept magnificently
and I daresay looked fine, but I knew at once that I should never be
able to act in it. I called out to Mrs. Nettleship and Alice Carr, who
were in the stalls, and implored them to lighten it of some of the
jewels.
"Oh, do keep it as it is," they answered, "it looks splendid."
"I can't breathe in it, much less act in it. Please send some one up to
cut off a few stones."
I went on with my part, and then, during a wait, two of Mrs.
Nettleship's assistants came on to the stage and snipped off a jewel
here and there. When they had filled a basket, I began to feel better!
But when they tried to lift that basket, their united efforts could not
move it!
On one occasion I wore a dress made in eight hours! During the first
week of the run of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at His Majesty's, there
was a fire in my dressing-room--an odd fire which was never accounted
for. In the morning they found the dress that I had worn as Mrs. Page
burnt to a cinder. A messenger from His Majesty's went to tell my
daughter, who had made the ill-fated dress:
"Miss Terry will, I suppose, have to wear one of our dresses to-night.
Perhaps you could make her a new one by the end of the week."
"Oh, that will be all right," said Edy, bluffing, "I'll make her a dress
by to-night." She has since told me that she did not really think she
_could_ make it in time!
She had at this time a workshop in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. All
hands were called into the service, and half an hour after the message
came from the theater the new dress was started. That was at 10.30.
Before 7 p.m. the new dress was in my dressing-room at His Majesty's
Theater.
And best of all, it was a great improvement on the dress that had been
burned! It stood the wear and tear of the first run of "Merry Wives" and
of all the revivals, and is still as fresh as paint!
That very successful dress cost no time. Another very successful
dress--the white one that I wore in the Court Scene in "A Winter's
Tale," cost no money. My daughter made it out of material of which a
sovereign must have covered the cost.
My daughter says to know what _not_ to do is the secret of making stage
dresses. It is not a question of time or of money, but of omission.
One of the best "audiences" that actor or actress could wish for was Mr.
Gladstone. He used often to come and see the play at the Lyceum from a
little seat in the O.P. entrance, and he nearly always arrived five
minutes before the curtain went up. One night I thought he would catch
cold--it was a bitter night--and I lent him my white scarf!
He could always give his whole great mind to the matter in hand. This
made him one of the most comfortable people to talk to that I have ever
met. In everything he was _thorough_, and I don't think he could have
been late for anything.
I contrasted his punctuality, when he came to see "King Lear," with the
unpunctuality of Lord Randolph Churchill, who came to see the play the
very next night with a party of men friends and arrived when the first
act was over.
Lord Randolph was, all the same, a great admirer of Henry Irving. He
confessed to him once that he had never read a play of Shakespeare's in
his life, but that after seeing Henry act he thought it was time to
begin! A very few days later he pulverized us with his complete and
masterly knowledge of at least half a dozen of the plays. He was a
perfect person to meet at a dinner or supper--brilliantly entertaining,
and queerly simple. He struck one as being able to master any subject
that interested him, and once a Shakespeare performance at the Lyceum
had fired his interest, there was nothing about that play, or about past
performances of it, which he did not know! His beautiful wife (now Mrs.
George Cornwallis West) wore a dress at supper one evening which gave me
the idea for the Lady Macbeth dress, afterwards painted by Sargent. The
bodice of Lady Randolph's gown was trimmed all over with green beetles'
wings. I told Mrs. Comyns Carr about it, and she remembered it when she
designed my Lady Macbeth dress and saw to its making by clever Mrs.
Nettleship.
Lady Randolph Churchill by sheer force of beauty of face and
expressiveness would, I venture to prophesy, have been successful on the
stage if fate had ever led her to it.
"BEEFSTEAK" GUESTS AT THE LYCEUM
The present Princess of Wales, when she was Princess May of Teck, used
often to come to the Lyceum with her mother, Princess Mary, and to
supper in the Beefsteak Room. In 1891 she chose to come as her birthday
treat, which was very flattering to us.
A record of those Beefsteak Room suppers would be a pleasant thing to
possess. I have such a bad memory--I see faces round the table--the face
of Liszt among them--and when I try to think when it was, or how it was,
the faces vanish as people might out of a room when, after having
watched them through a dim window-pane, one determines to open the
door--and go in.
Lady Dorothy Nevill, that distinguished lady of the old school--what a
picture of a woman!--was always a fine theater-goer. Her face always
cheered me if I saw it in the theater, and she was one of the most
clever and amusing of the Beefsteak Room guests. As a hostess, sitting
in her round chair, with her hair dressed to _become_ her, irrespective
of any period, leading this, that and the other of her guests to speak
upon their particular subjects, she was simply the _ideal_.
Singers were often among Henry Irving's guests in the Beefsteak
Room--Patti, Melba, CalvŽ, Albani, Sims Reeves, Tamagno, Victor Maurel,
and many others.
CalvŽ! The New York newspapers wrote "Salve CalvŽ!" and I would echo
them. She is the best singer-actress that I know. They tell me that
Grisi and Mario were fine dramatically. When I saw them, they were on
the point of retiring, and I was a child. I remember that Madame Grisi
was very stout, but Mario certainly acted well. Trebelli was a noble
actress; Maria Gay is splendid, and oh! Miss Mary Garden! Never shall I
forget her acting in "Griselidis." Yet for all the talent of these
singers whom I have named, and among whom I should surely have placed
the incomparable Maurel, whose Iago was superb, I think that the arts of
singing and acting can seldom be happily married. They quarrel all the
while! A few operas seem to have been written with a knowledge of the
difficulty of the conventions which intervene to prevent the expression
of dramatic emotion; and these operas are contrived with amazing
cleverness so that the acting shall have free play. Verdi in "Othello,"
and Bizet in "Carmen" came nearest solving the problem.
To go back to CalvŽ. She has always seemed to me a darling, as well as a
great artist. She was entirely generous and charming to me when we were
living for some weeks together in the same New York hotel. One wonderful
Sunday evening I remember dining with her, and she sang and sang for me,
as if she could never grow tired. One thing she said she had never sung
so well before, and she laughed in her delicious rapturous way and sang
it all over again.
Her enthusiasm for acting, music, and her fellow-artists was
magnificent. Oh, what a lovable creature! Such soft dark eyes and
entreating ways, such a beautiful mixture of nobility and "c‰linerie"!
She would laugh and cry all in a moment like a child. That year in New
York she was raved about, but all the excitement and enthusiasm that she
created only seemed to please and amuse her. She was not in the least
spoiled by the fuss.
I once watched Patti sing from behind scenes at the Metropolitan Opera
House, New York. My impression from that point of view was that she was
actually a _bird_! She could not help singing! Her head, flattened on
top, her nose tilted downwards like a lovely little beak, her throat
swelling and swelling as it poured out that extraordinary volume of
sound, all made me think that she must have been a nightingale before
she was transmigrated into a human being! Near, I was amazed by the
loudness of her song. I imagine that Tetrazzini, whom I have not yet
heard, must have this bird-like quality.
The dear kind-hearted Melba has always been a good friend of mine. The
first time I met her was in New York at a supper party, and she had a
bad cold, and therefore a frightful _speaking_ voice for the moment! I
shall never forget the shock that it gave me. Thank goodness I very soon
afterwards heard her again when she hadn't a cold!
"All's well that ends well." It ended very well. She spoke as
exquisitely as she sang. She was one of the first to offer her services
for my jubilee performance at Drury Lane, but unfortunately she was ill
when the day came, and could not sing. She had her dresses in "Faust"
copied from mine by Mrs. Nettleship, and I came across a note from her
the other day thanking me for having introduced her to a dressmaker who
was "an angel." Another note sent round to me during a performance of
"King Arthur" in Boston I shall always prize.
"You are sublime, adorable _ce soir_.... I wish I were a millionaire--I
would throw _all_ my millions at your feet. If there is another
procession, tell the stage manager to see those imps of Satan _don't
chew gum_. It looks awful.
"Love,
"MELBA"
I think that time it was the solemn procession of mourners following the
dead body of Elaine who were chewing gum; but we always had to be
prepared for it among our American "supers," whether they were angels or
devils or courtiers!
In "Faust" we "carried" about six leading witches for the Brocken Scene,
and recruited the forty others from local talent in the different towns
that we visited. Their general direction was to throw up their arms and
look fierce at certain music cues. One night I noticed a girl going
through the most terrible contortions with her jaw, and thought I must
say something.
"That's right, dear. Very good, but don't exaggerate."
"How?" was all the answer that I got in the choicest nasal twang, and
the girl continued to make faces as before.
I was contemplating a second attempt, when Templeton, the limelight man,
who had heard me speak to her, touched me gently on the shoulder.
"Beg pardon, miss, she don't mean it. She's only _chewing gum_!"
One of my earliest friends among literary folk was Mr. Charles
Dodgson--or Lewis Carroll--or "Alice in Wonderland." Ah, _that_ conveys
something to you! I can't remember when I didn't know him. I think he
must have seen Kate act as a child, and having given _her_ "Alice"--he
always gave his young friends "Alice" at once by way of establishing
pleasant relations--he made a progress as the years went on through the
whole family. Finally he gave "Alice" to my children.
He was a splendid theater-goer, and took the keenest interest in all
the Lyceum productions, frequently writing to me to point out slips in
the dramatist's logic which only he would ever have noticed! He did not
even spare Shakespeare. I think he wrote these letters for fun, as some
people make puzzles, anagrams, or Limericks!
"Now I'm going to put before you a 'Hero-ic' puzzle of mine, but
please remember I do not ask for your solution of it, as you will
persist in believing, if I ask your help in a Shakespeare
difficulty, that I am only jesting! However, if you won't attack it
yourself, perhaps you would ask Mr. Irving some day how _he_
explains it?
"My difficulty is this:--Why in the world did not Hero (or at any
rate Beatrice on her behalf) prove an 'alibi' in answer to the
charge? It seems certain that she did _not_ sleep in her room that
night; for how could Margaret venture to open the window and talk
from it, with her mistress asleep in the room? It would be sure to
wake her. Besides Borachio says, after promising that Margaret
shall speak with him out of Hero's chamber window, 'I will so
fashion the matter that Hero shall be absent.' (_How_ he could
possibly manage any such thing is another difficulty, but I pass
over that.) Well then, granting that Hero slept in some other room
that night, why didn't she say so? When Claudio asks her: 'What man
was he talked with yesternight out at your window betwixt twelve
and one?' why doesn't she reply: 'I talked with no man at that
hour, my lord. Nor was I in my chamber yesternight, but in another,
far from it, remote.' And this she could, of course, prove by the
evidence of the housemaids, who must have known that she had
occupied another room that night.
"But even if Hero might be supposed to be so distracted as not to
remember where she had slept the night before, or even whether she
had slept _anywhere_, surely _Beatrice_ has her wits about her! And
when an arrangement was made, by which she was to lose, for one
night, her twelve-months' bedfellow, is it conceivable that she
didn't know _where_ Hero passed the night? Why didn't _she_ reply:
"But good my lord sweet Hero slept not there:
She had another chamber for the nonce.
'Twas sure some counterfeit that did present
Her person at the window, aped her voice,
Her mien, her manners, and hath thus deceived
My good Lord Pedro and this company?'
"With all these excellent materials for proving an 'alibi' it is
incomprehensible that no one should think of it. If only there had
been a barrister present, to cross-examine Beatrice!
"'Now, ma'am, attend to me, please, and speak up so that the jury
can hear you. Where did you sleep last night? Where did Hero sleep?
Will you swear that she slept in her own room? Will you swear that
you do not know where she slept?' I feel inclined to quote old Mr.
Weller and to say to Beatrice at the end of the play (only I'm
afraid it isn't etiquette to speak across the footlights):
"'Oh, Samivel, Samivel, vy vornt there a halibi?'"
Mr. Dodgson's kindness to children was wonderful. He _really_ loved them
and put himself out for them. The children he knew who wanted to go on
the stage were those who came under my observation, and nothing could
have been more touching than his ceaseless industry on their behalf.