with the actor—Irving put a new phase of the same idea:
“It matters little whether the actor sheds tears or not, so long as he
can make his audience shed them; but if tears can be summoned at will
and subject to his control it is true art to utilise such a power, and
happy is the actor whose sensibility has at once such delicacy and
discipline. In this respect the actor is like the orator. Eloquence is
all the more moving when it is animated and directed by a fine and
subtle sympathy which affects the spectator though it does not master
him.”
VII
DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The last-mentioned utterance of Irving’s brings us at once to the
deepest problem in the art of acting: the value and use of sensibility.
Throughout his later life, from the time he first entered the polemics
of his art, he held consistently to one theory. To him the main
disputants were Diderot and Talma; any other was merely a supporter of
the theory of either.
Diderot in his _Paradox of Acting_ held that for good acting there must
be no real feeling on the part of the actor:
“Extreme sensibility makes middling actors; middling sensibility makes
the ruck of bad actors; in complete absence of sensibility is the
possibility of a sublime actor.”
Irving’s comment on this theory is:
“The exaltation of sensibility in Art may be difficult to define, but
it is none the less real to all who have felt its power.”
Talma[1] held quite the opposite view to that of Diderot. To him one of
the first qualifications of an actor is sensibility, which indeed he
considered the very source of imagination. To this quality, he held,
there must be added intelligence:
Footnote 1:
When Irving began to consider this branch of the “true inwardness” of
his work he was so much struck with the argument of Talma that he had
it translated and inserted in _The Theatre_. This was easy of
accomplishment, for with regard to that magazine he had only to ask.
As a matter of fact _The Theatre_ at that time belonged to him. He had
long considered it advisable that there should be some organ in which
matters deeply concerning the stage could be set forth. He accordingly
arranged with the late Mr. F. W. Hawkins, then a sub-editor of the
_Times_, to take the work in hand. Hawkins had already by his work
shown his interest in the stage; Irving had a high opinion of his
“Life of Edmund Kean” and of his book on the French stage which he had
then well in hand. He trusted Hawkins entirely; gave him a free hand,
and never interfered with him in any possible way except to suggest
some useful article of a neutral kind. He would never even give a hint
of his own opinion regarding any one of his own profession, but kept
studiously out of the theatrical party-politics of the day. Hawkins
had his own views which he was perfectly well able to support; he
could take care of himself. Irving was content that the magazine
should exist, and footed the bills. Later on when the editorship was
vacant Irving made a present of the whole thing to Clement Scott who
said that he would like to see what he could do with it.
The Talma articles appeared in _The Theatre_ for the 30th January and
6th and 13th February 1877. This was before I came to Irving. It was
long afterwards when I read them.
In 1883 Walter Herries Pollock, then editor of the _Saturday Review_,
a great friend of Irving, produced an edition of the _Paradox of
Acting_ to which Irving wrote a preface. In this he set out his own
views in his comments on the work of Diderot.
“To form a great actor ... the union of sensibility and intelligence
is required.”
Irving used his knowledge of the controversy to this effect:
“I do not recommend actors to allow their feelings to carry them
away ...; but it is necessary to warn you against the theory,
expounded with brilliant ingenuity by Diderot, that the actor never
feels.... Has not the actor who can ... make his feelings a part of
his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but makes his
observations solely from the feelings of others? _It is necessary to
this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double
consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may
have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for
every detail of his method...._ The actor who combines the electric
force of a strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his
art, must have a greater power over his audiences than the passionless
actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the emotions he never
experiences.”
The sentence printed in italics is a really valuable addition to the
philosophy of acting. It is Irving’s own and is, as may be seen, a
development or corollary of Talma’s conclusion. Talma required as a
necessity of good acting both sensibility and intelligence. But Irving
claimed that in the practice of the art they must exist and act
synchronously. This belief he cherished, and on it he acted with
excellent result. I have myself seen a hundred instances of its
efficiency in the way of protective self-control; of conscious freedom
of effort; of self-reliance; of confidence in giving the reins to
passion within the set bounds of art.[2]
Footnote 2:
I have seen a good many times Irving illustrate and prove the theory
of the dual consciousness in and during his own acting; when he has
gone on with his work heedless of a fire on the stage and its
quelling: when a gas-tank underneath the stage exploded and actually
dispersed some of the boarding close to him, he all the time
proceeding without even a moment’s pause or a falter in his voice. One
other occasion was typical. During a performance of _The Lyons Mail_,
whilst Dubose surrounded by his gang was breaking open the iron
strong-box conveyed in the mail-cart the horses standing behind him
began to get restive and plunged about wildly, making a situation of
considerable danger. The other members of the murderous gang were
quickly off the stage, and the dead body of the postillion rolled away
to the wings. But Irving never even looked round. He went calmly on
with his work of counting the _billets de banque_, whilst he
interlarded the words of the play with admonitions to his comrades not
to be frightened but to come back and attend to their work of robbing.
Not for an instant did he cease to be Dubose though in addition he
became manager of the theatre.
In speaking of other branches of the subject Irving said:
“An actor must either think for himself or imitate some one else.”
And again:
“For the purely monkey arts of life there is no future—they stand only
in the crude glare of the present, and there is no softness for them,
in the twilight of either hope or memory. With the true artist the
internal force is the first requisite—the external appearance being
merely the medium through which this is made known to others.”
VIII
INDIVIDUALITY, AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF IT
If an actor has to learn of others—often primarily—through his own
emotions, it is surely necessary that he learn first to know himself. He
need not take himself as a standard of perfection—though poor human
nature is apt to lean that way; but he can accept himself as something
that he knows. If he cannot get that far he will never know anything.
With himself then, and his self-knowledge as a foothold, he may begin to
understand others.[3]
Footnote 3:
As an instance of the efficacy of the method, let any one try to tell
character by handwriting. It is very simple, after all. Let him take
the strange writing, and after making himself familiar with it,
measure it by himself, asking himself: “Under stress of what emotion
would my own writing most nearly resemble that?” Let him repeat this
with each sign of divergence from his own caligraphy: and in a short
time he will be astonished with the result. So it is with all studies
of character. Without any standard the task is impossible; but weigh
each against your own self-knowledge and you at once begin to acquire
comparative knowledge of simple qualities capable of being combined
endlessly.
Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν Know thyself! It is, after all, the base of all knowledge—
the foothold for all forward thought. Commenting on the speech of
Polonius: “To thine own self be true,” Irving said:
“But how can a man be true to himself if he does not know himself?
‘Know thyself’ was a wisdom of the Ancients. But how can a man know
himself if he mistrusts his own identity, and if he puts aside his
special gifts in order to render himself an imperfect similitude of
some one else?”
IX
Thus we have come back to Irving’s original proposition:
“If you do not pass a character through your own mind it can never be
sincere.” The logical wheel has gone its full round and is back at the
starting-place. Begin with the argument where you will it must come
sooner or later to the same end: “To know others know yourself.” Your
own identity is that which you must, for histrionic purposes, clothe
with attributes not your own. You must have before your mind some
definite image of what you would portray; and your own feeling must be
ultimately its quickening force.
So far, the resolution of the poet’s thought into a moving, breathing,
visible, tangible character. But that is not the completion of the
endeavour. In the philosophy of histrionic art are rarer heights than
mere embodiment, mere vitality, mere illusion. The stage is a world of
its own, and has its own ambitions, its own duties. Truth either to
natural types or to the arbitrary creations of the dramatist is not
sufficient. For the altitudes something else is required. Irving set it
forth thus:
“Finally in the consideration of the Art of Acting, it must never be
forgotten that its ultimate aim is beauty. Truth itself is only an
element of beauty, and to merely reproduce things vile and squalid and
mean is a debasement of art.”
Here he supports the theory of Taine that art, like nature, has its own
selective power; and that in the wisdom of its choosing is its power for
good. Does it not march with that sublime apothegm of Burke: “Vice
itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness”?
Finally Irving summed up the whole Philosophy of his Art and of its
place amongst the sister Arts in a few sentences:
“In painting and in the drama the methods of the workers are so
entirely opposed, and the materials with which they work are so
different, that a mutual study of the other work cannot but be of
service to each. Your painter works in mouldable materials, inanimate,
not sensitive but yielding to the lightest touch. His creation is the
embodiment of the phantasm of his imagination, for in art the purpose
is to glorify and not merely to reproduce. He uses forms and facts of
nature that he may not err against nature’s laws. But such natural
facts as he assimilates are reproduced in his work, deified by the
strength of his own imagination. Actors, on the other hand, have to
work with materials which are all natural, and not all plastic, but
are all sensitive—with some of the strength and all the weakness of
flesh and blood. The actor has first to receive in his own mind the
phantasmal image which is conveyed to him by the words of the poet;
and this he has to reproduce as well as he can with the faulty
material which nature has given to him. Thus the painter and the poet
begin from different ends of the gamut of natural possibilities—the
one starts from nature to reach imagination, the other from
imagination to reach at reality. And if the means be not inadequate,
and if the effort be sincere, both can reach that veritable ground
where reality and imagination join. This is the true realism towards
which all should aim—the holy ground whereon is reared the Pantheon of
all the Arts.”
XLV
THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
I
For fourteen years, from 1881 to 1895, Mr. Gladstone was a visitor at
the Lyceum. The first occasion was on the First night of _The Cup_,
January 3, 1881, of which I have already written. He had known Irving
before, but this was the first time he had been behind the Lyceum
scenes. He was very interested in everything, especially those matters
of which up to then he knew little such as the setting of the scenes.
His fund of information was prodigious and one could feel that he took a
delight in adding to it. He was on that occasion very complimentary
about all he saw and very anxious to know of the reality—as
distinguished from the seeming—of things such as food and drink used,
&c. That night his visit to the stage was only a passing one as he sat
through the active part of the play in his own box, except during a part
of one scene.
He seemed ever afterwards to take a great interest in Irving and all he
did. On July 8 of the same year he came to the Lyceum and brought Lord
Northbrook with him. Whenever he visited the theatre after 1881 he
always came and went by the private door in Burleigh Street, and he
always managed to visit Irving on the stage or in his dressing-room or
both. The public seemed to take a delight in seeing him at the theatre,
and he appeared to take a delight in coming. I honestly believe that he
found in it, now and again, an intellectual stimulant—either an
excitement or a pausing-time _before_ some great effort, or a relief of
change from fact to fancy _after_ it. For instance: On April 8, 1886,
Thursday, he made his great speech in the House of Commons introducing
the Home Rule Bill—amid a time of great excitement. Two nights after,
Saturday night, he came to the Lyceum—and received an immense ovation.
Again, in the time of bitter regret and anxiety when Parnell made the
violent attack on him in his Manifesto, November 29, 1890, Saturday, he
took his earliest opportunity, Tuesday, December 2, of coming to the
Lyceum.
[Illustration:
_Photo Window & Grove_
ELLEN TERRY AS IMOGEN, 1896
]
This visit was a somewhat special one, for it was the first time that
Mr. Gladstone came to sit behind the scenes in the O.P.[4] proscenium
corner which then became known as “Mr. Gladstone’s seat.” The occasion
of it was thus: I had the year previously written an Irish novel, _The
Snake’s Pass_, which after running as a serial through the London
_People_ and several provincial papers had now been published in book
form. I had done myself the pleasure of sending an early copy to Mr.
Gladstone, whose magnificent power and ability and character I had all
my life so much admired. Having met and conversed with him several times
I felt in a way justified in so doing. He had at once written; I
received his letter the same day—that of publication, November 18, 1890.
I give his letter, which was in the post-card form then usual to him. I
think it is a good example of his method of correspondence, kind and
thoughtful and courteous—a model of style. I had as may be gathered
written with some diffidence, or delicacy of feeling:
Footnote 4:
Opposite prompt.
“DEAR MR. BRAM STOKER,—My social memory is indeed a bad one, yet not
so bad as to prevent my recollection of our various meetings. I thank
you much for your work, and for your sympathy; and I hope to have
perused all your pages before we meet again. When that will be I know
not; but I am so fond a lover of _The Bride of Lammermoor_ that I may
take the desperate step of asking Mr. Irving whether he will some
night, if it is on, let me sit behind the stage pillar—a post which C.
Kean once gave me, and which alone would make me sure to hear.—Yours
faithfully,
“W.E. GLADSTONE.
“_N. 18, 90._”
Some days later, after a most cordial invitation from Irving, it was
arranged that he should choose exactly what date he wished and that all
should be ready for him. There could be no difficulty, as _Ravenswood_
was the only play then in the bill and would hold it alone till the
beginning of the new year. When he did come I met him and Mrs. Gladstone
at the private door and piloted them across the stage, which was the
nearest way to Irving’s box. The door to it was beside the corner where
Mr. Gladstone would sit.
Possibly it was that as Mr. Gladstone was then full of Irish matters my
book, being of Ireland and dealing with Irish ways and specially of a
case of oppression by a “gombeen” man under a loan secured on land,
interested him, for he had evidently read it carefully. As we walked
across the stage he spoke to me of it very kindly and very searchingly.
Of course I was more than pleased when he said:
“That scene at Mrs. Kelligan’s is fine—very fine indeed!”
Now it must be remembered that, in the interval between his getting the
book and when we met, had occurred one of the greatest troubles and
trials of his whole political life. The hopes which he had built through
the slow progress of years for the happy settlement of centuries-old
Irish troubles had been suddenly almost shattered by a bolt from the
blue, and his great intellect and enormous powers of work and
concentration had been for many days strained to the utmost to keep the
road of the future clear from the possibility of permanent destruction
following on temporary embarrassment. And yet in the midst of all he
found time to read—and remember, even to details and names—the work of
an unimportant friend.
When it had been known on the stage that Mr. Gladstone was coming that
night to sit behind the scenes the men seemed determined to make it a
gala occasion. They had prepared the corner where he was to sit as
though it were for Royalty. They had not only swept and dusted but had
scrubbed the floor; and they had rigged up a sort of canopy of crimson
velvet so that neither dust nor draught should come to the old man. His
chair was nicely padded and made comfortable. The stage men were all, as
though by chance, on the stage and all in their Sunday clothes. As the
Premier came in all hats went off. I showed Mr. Gladstone his nook and
told him, to his immense gratification, how the men had prepared it on
their own initiative. We chatted till the time drew near for the curtain
to go up. Then I fixed him in his place and showed him how to watch for
and avoid the drop-scene, the great roller of which would descend guided
by the steel cord drawn taut beside him. Lest there should be any danger
through his unfamiliarity with the ways of theatres, I signalled the
Master Carpenter to come to me and thus cautioned him:
“Would it not be well,” I said, “if some one stood near here in case of
accident?”
“It’s all right, sir, we have provided for that. The two best and
steadiest men in the theatre are here ready!” I looked round and they
were—alert and watchful. And there they remained all night. There was
not going to be any chance of mishap to Mr. Gladstone _that_ night!
I went always to join him between the acts, and Irving, when he had
opportunity from his dressing—of which there was a good deal in
_Ravenswood_—would come to talk with him. We were all, whatever our
political opinions individually, full of the Parnell Manifesto and its
many bearings on political life. For myself, though I was a
philosophical Home-Ruler, I was much surprised and both angry at and
sorry for Parnell’s attitude, and I told Mr. Gladstone my opinion. He
said with great earnestness and considerable feeling:
“I am very angry, but I assure you I am even more sorry.”
On that particular night he was very chatty, and in commenting on the
play compared, strangely enough, Caleb Balderstone with Falstaff. He was
interested and eager about everything round him and asked innumerable
questions. In the course of conversation he said that he had always
taken it for granted that the stage word “properties” included costumes.
He was seemingly delighted with that visit, and from that time on
whenever he came to the theatre he always occupied the same place, Mrs.
Gladstone and whoever might be with him sitting in Irving’s box close at
hand.
II
The next time he came, which was on January 29 of the next year, 1891,
he generously brought Irving a cheque for ten pounds for the Actors’
Benevolent Fund. That evening too he was delighted with the play, _Much
Ado About Nothing_, which he had seen before in 1882, in the ordinary
way. He applauded loudly, just as he used to do when sitting in the
front of the house.
III
He came again in 1892, May 7, when we were playing _Henry VIII._, and in
the course of conversation commented on Froude’s estimate of the
population of England in the sixteenth century, which according to his
ideas had been stated much below the mark. He also spoke of Dante being
in Oxford—a subject about which he wrote in the _Nineteenth Century_ in
the next month.
Another instance of Mr. Gladstone’s visit to the Lyceum: on the evening
of February 25, 1893, he came to see _Becket_. He had introduced his
second Home Rule Bill on the thirteenth of the month, and as it was
being discussed he was naturally full of it—so were we all. By the way
the Bill was carried in the Commons at the end of August of that year.
That night when speaking of his new Bill, he said to me:
“I will venture to say that in four or five years those who oppose it
will wonder what it was that they opposed!”
He was delighted with _Becket_, and seemed specially to rejoice in the
success of Tennyson’s work.
IV
He was as usual much interested in matters of cost. Irving talked with
him very freely, and amongst other things mentioned the increasing
expenses of working a theatre, especially with regard to the salaries of
actors which had, he said, almost been doubled of late years. Gladstone
seemed instantly struck with this. When Irving had gone to change his
dress, Gladstone said to me suddenly:
“You told me, I think, that you are Chancellor of the Exchequer here.”
“Yes!” I said. “As in your own case, Mr. Gladstone, that is one of my
functions!”
“Then would you mind answering me a few questions?” On my giving a
hearty acquiescence he began to inquire exhaustively with regard to
different classes of actors and others, and seemed to be weighing in his
mind the relative advances. In fact his queries covered the whole
ground, for now and again he asked as to the quality of materials used.
I knew he was omnivorous with regard to finance, but to-night I was
something surprised at the magnitude and persistence of his interests.
The reason came shortly. Three days after the visit, 28th February, Sir
Henry Meysey-Thompson, M.P. for Handsworth, voiced in the House the
wishes then floating of the Bi-Metallists for an International Monetary
Conference. Mr. Gladstone replied to him in a great speech, the
immediate effect of which was to relegate the matter to the Greek
Kalends. In this speech he began with the standard of value, and by
figures arrived at gold as the least variable standard. Then he went on
to the values and change of various commodities, leading him to what he
called “the greatest commodity of the world—human labour.” This he
broadly differentiated into three classes of work which were dependent
on ordinary trade laws and conditions, and of a more limited class which
seemed to illustrate the natural changes of the laws of value, inasmuch
as the earners were not influenced to any degree by the course of events
or the cost of materials. This, broadly speaking, was his sequence of
ideas. When he had got so far he said:
“Take also the limited class about whom I happened to hear the other
day—the theatrical profession. I have it on unquestionable authority
that the ordinary payments received by actors and actresses have risen
largely.”
With his keen instinct for both finance and argument he had seized at
once on Irving’s remark about the increase of salaries, recognising on
the instant its suitability as an illustration in the setting forth of
his views. And I doubt if he could have found any other class of
wage-earning so isolated from commercial changes.
V
Irving told me of an interesting conversation which he had in those days
with Lord Randolph Churchill in which the latter mentioned Gladstone in
a striking way. Answering a query following on some previous remark, he
said:
“The fact is we are all afraid of him!”
“How is that—and why?” asked Irving.
“Well, you see, he is a first-class man. And the rest of us are only
second class—at best!”