as Shakespeare. He has a right of his own in interpretation, and the
only point is how far he makes good his claims, and that you have done
to a wonderful extent. Yours was not acting: it was life itself, so
true, natural and convincing was every word, every shade of expression
upon your face or in your voice. The gradual transformation of the
man, his humbling himself, the revelation of his better, sympathetic
self—it was all a wonder of realism, nature and subtlety. Your acting
reminded me of the pictures of the great Flemish master who seems to
paint not with a brush but with a needle. Yet this astonishing
subtlety was in no way prejudicial to the completeness and the power
and masterliness of the great whole.... I cannot forbear from asking
you to transmit my compliments and admiration to Miss Ellen Terry—if
you think that she may care about such a humble tribute. There is a
passage from ‘I love your Majesty according to my bonds, not more or
less’ and the following monologue, which I am bold enough to say are
the weakest in the play: too cold and dry and forward and elaborate
for Cordelia. But in her rendering there was nothing of that: it was
all simplicity, tenderness, spontaneous emotion. The charm of her
personality and character, which she has such a unique gift of
infusing into everything, has partially improved the original text. I
hope you will not consider my saying so too sacrilegious. There are
spots upon the sun. And the scene in the French camp! Her ‘No cause,
no cause!’ was quite a stroke of genius. I would not believe before I
saw her in that, that words can produce such an emotion.”
And this was the man who stood for wiping tyrants from the face of the
earth; who aided in the task, if _Underground Russia_ be even based on
truth. This gentle, appreciative, keenly critical, sympathetic man!
Strange it was that he who must have gone through such appalling dangers
as beset hourly the workers in the Nihilist cause and come through them
all unscathed was finally killed in the commonplace way of being run
over by a train on the underground railway.
IV
It reminds me of another experience with Irving and a surprising
_dénouement_. When we were in California in 1893 a gentleman called to
see Irving at his hotel. He was a countryman of Stepniak, but of quite
the opposite degree—a Prince claiming blood kin with the Czar, Nicholas
Galitzin. He supped with Irving and some others, forty-five in all, at
the Café Riche, 13th September, when he gave Irving a very charming
souvenir in the shape of a gold match-box set with gems. Several times
after we met at supper and came to be quite friends. Prince Galitzin was
a mighty hunter and had slain much big game, including even grizzlies
and other bears. He told us many interesting hunting adventures. He had
lost one arm. He had not mentioned any adventure bearing on this, and
Irving asked him if it was by a mischance in a hunting adventure that he
had suffered the loss. He said with a laugh:
“No! No! Nothing of the kind. It was a damn stupid fellow who let a
Saratoga trunk fall on me over the staircase of a hotel!”
XLIX
E. ONSLOW FORD, R.A.
One morning—it was 12th January 1880—I got a note from Irving sent down
by cab from his rooms. In it he said:
“There is a certain Mr. Onslow Ford coming to the theatre this morning.
Please see him for me and give him some fatherly or brotherly advice.”
I left word with the hall-keeper to send for me whenever the gentleman
came. I did not know who he was or what he wanted: but I did know what
“fatherly or brotherly advice” meant. At that period of his life the
demands made on Irving’s time were fearful. There was no end to them; no
limit to the range of their wants. And I was the “fatherly adviser” in
such cases.
A little after noon I was sent for; the expected stranger had arrived.
In those days the stage door in Exeter Street was very small and
absolutely inconvenient. There was comfortable room for Sergeant Barry,
the hall-keeper, who was a fine, big, bulky man; two in the room crowded
it. Barry waited outside and I went in. The stranger was a young man of
medium height, thin, dark haired. His hair rose back from his forehead
without parting of any kind, in the way which we in those days
associated in our minds with French artists. His face was pale, a little
sallow, fine in profile and moulding; a nose of distinction with
sensitive nostrils. He had a small beard and moustache. His eyes were
dark and concentrated—distinctly “seeing” eyes. My heart warmed to him
at once. He was young and earnest and fine; I knew at a glance that he
was an artist, and with a future. Still I had to be on guard. One of my
functions at the theatre, as I had come to know after a year of
exceedingly arduous work, was to act as a barrier. I was “the Spirit
that Denies!” In fact I had to be. No one likes to say “no!”—a very few
are constitutionally able to. I had set myself to help Irving in his
work and this was one of the best ways I could help him. He recognised
gratefully the utility of the service, and as he trusted absolutely in
my discretion. I gradually fell into the habit of using my own decision
in the great majority of cases.
When Mr. Onslow Ford told me that he wished to make a statuette of Henry
Irving as Hamlet I felt that the time for “advice” had come, and began
to pave the way for a _non possumus_, strong in intention though gentle
in expression. The young sculptor, however, had thought the matter all
over for himself. He knew the demands on Irving’s time and how vastly
difficult it would be to get sittings so many and so long as would be
required for the work he had projected. I listened of course and thought
better of him and his chance in that he knew his difficulties at the
beginning.
Presently he put his hand in his pocket and took out something rolled in
paper—a parcel about as big as a pork pie. When he had unrolled it he
held up a rough clay model of a seated figure.
“This,” said he, “is something of the idea. I have been several times in
the front row of the stalls watching as closely as I could. One cannot
well model clay in the stalls of a theatre. But I did this after the
first time, and I have had it with me on each other occasion. I compared
it on such opportunities as I had—you do keep the Lyceum dark all but
the stage; and I think I can see my way. I don’t want to waste Irving’s
time or my own opportunities if I am so fortunate as to get sittings!”
That was the sort of artist that needed none of my “advice”—fatherly,
brotherly, or otherwise. My mind was already made up.
“Would you mind waiting here a while?” I asked. In those early days we
had only the one office and no waiting-room except the stage. He waited
gladly, whilst I went back to the office. Irving had by this time
arrived. I told him I had seen Mr. Ford.
“I hope you put it nicely to him that I can’t possibly give him
sittings,” he said.
“That is why I came to see if you had arrived.”
“How do you mean,” he asked again. So I said:
“I think you had better see him, and if you think as I do you will give
him sittings!”
“Oh, my dear fellow, I can’t. I am really too pressed with work.”
“Well, see him any way!” I said; “I have asked him to wait on purpose.”
He looked at me keenly for an instant as though I had somehow “gone
back” on him. Then he smiled:
“All right. I’ll see him now!”
I brought Onslow Ford. When the two men met, Irving _did_ share my
opinion. He did give sittings for a bronze statuette. The result was so
fine that he gave quite another series of sittings for him to do the
life-size marble statue of “Irving as Hamlet” now in the Library of the
London Guildhall. It is a magnificent work, and will perhaps best of all
his works perpetuate the memory of the great Sculptor who died all too
young.
Irving gave many sittings for the statue. With the experience of his
first work Onslow Ford could begin with knowledge of the face so
necessary in portrait art. I often went with him and it was an intense
pleasure to see Onslow Ford’s fine hands at work. They seemed like
living things working as though they had their own brains and
initiation.
I was even able to be of some little assistance. I knew Irving’s face so
well from seeing it so perpetually under almost all possible phases of
emotion that I could notice any error of effect if not of measurement.
Often either Irving or Onslow Ford would ask me and I would give my
opinion. For instance:
“I think the right jowl is not right!” The sculptor examined it
thoughtfully for quite a while. Then he said suddenly:
“Quite right! but not in that way. I see what it is!” and he proceeded
to add to the left of the forehead.
After all, effect is comparative; this is one of the great principles of
art!
On 31st March 1906, one of the Academy view days of those not yet Royal
Academicians, I went to Onslow Ford’s old studio in Acacia Road, now in
possession of his son, Wolfram the painter, to see his portrait of his
beautiful young wife, the daughter of George Henschel. Whilst we were
talking of old days he unearthed treasures which I did not know existed:
casts from life of Henry Irving’s hands.
No other such relics of the actor exist; and these are of supreme
interest. Irving had the finest man’s hands I have ever seen. Later on
he sent me a cast of one of them in bronze; a rare and beautiful thing
which I shall always value. Size and shape, proportion and articulation
were all alike beautiful and distinguished and distinctive. It would be
hard to mistake them for those of any other man. With them he could
_speak_. It was not possible to doubt the meaning which he intended to
convey. With such models to work on a few lines of pencil or brush made
for the actor an enlightening identity of character. The weakness of
Charles I., which not all the skill of Vandyck could hide; the vulture
grip of Shylock; the fossilised age of Gregory Brewster; the asceticism
of Becket.
What, after the face, can compare with the hand for character, or
intention, or illustration. It can be an index to the working of the
mind.
L
SIR LAURENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
I
In his speech at the close of the second “season” at the Lyceum, 25th
July, 1879, Irving announced amongst the old plays which he intended to
do, _Coriolanus_. He never announced any play, then or thereafter,
without having thought it well over and come to some conclusion as to
its practicability. In this instance he had already made up his mind to
ask Laurence Alma-Tadema to make designs for the play and to superintend
its production. The experience of having a free hand in such matters,
now that he was his own master in regard to stage productions, had shown
to him the great possibilities of effect to be produced by the great
masters of technique. There had in the past been great painters who had
worked for the stage. Loutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield, for instance,
had made fame in both ways of picturesque art, the gallery and the
stage. But the idea was new of getting specialists in various periods to
apply their personal skill as well as their archæological knowledge to
stage effect. Indeed up to that time even great painters were not always
historically accurate. A survey of the work of most of the painters of
the first half of the Victorian epoch will show such glaring instances
of anachronism and such manifest breaches of geographical, ethnological,
and technological exactness as to illustrate the extraordinary change
for the better in the way of accuracy in the work of to-day. The
National Gallery and Holland House have instances of errors in costumes
incorrect as to alleged nationality and date. Irving wanted things to be
correct, well knowing that as every age has its own suitabilities to its
own needs that which is accurate is most likely to convince. Alma-Tadema
had made a speciality of artistic archæology of Ancient Rome. In working
from his knowledge he had reformed the whole artistic ideas of the time.
He had so studied the life of old Rome that he had for his own purposes
reconstructed it. Up to his time, for instance, the toga was in art
depicted as a thin linen robe of somewhat scanty proportions. Look at
the picture of Kemble as Cato by Lawrence, or indeed of any ancient
Roman by any one. Irving had become possessed of the toga of Macready,
and anything more absurd one could hardly imagine; it was something like
a voluminous night-shirt. Of course the audience also were ignorant of
the real thing, and so it did not matter; the great actor’s powers were
unlessened by the common ignorance. In his studying for his art
Alma-Tadema had taken from many statues and fragments the folds as well
as the texture of the toga. With infinite patience he had gathered up
details of various kinds, till at last, with a mind stored with
knowledge, he set to himself the task of reconstruction; to restore the
toga so that it would answer all the conditions evidenced in
contemporary statuary. And the result? Not a flimsy covering which would
have become draggle-tailed in a day or an hour of strenuous work; but a
huge garment of heavy cloth which would allow of infinite varieties of
wearing, and which would preserve the body from the burning heat of the
day and the reacting chills of night. Even for the purposes of pictorial
art the revived toga made a new condition of things, in all ways
harmonising with the accepted facts. There is on record plenty of marble
and stone work of old Rome; of work in bronze and brass and iron and
copper; in silver and gold; in jewels and crystals—in fact in all those
materials which do not yield to the ravages of time. All this
Alma-Tadema had studied till he _knew_ it. He was familiar with the
kinds of marble and stone used in Roman architecture, statuary, and
domestic service. The kinds of glass and crystal; of armour and arms; of
furniture; of lighting; sacerdotal and public and domestic service. He
knew how a velarium should be made and of what, and how adorned; how it
should be put up and secured. He was learned of boats and chariots; of
carts and carriages, and of the trappings of horses. Implements of
agriculture and trade and manufacture and for domestic use were familiar
to him. He was a master of the many ceremonial undertakings which had
such a part in Roman life.... In fact, Alma-Tadema’s artistic
reconstruction was like that of Owen; he reconciled fragments and
brought to light proof of the unities and harmonies and suitabilities of
ancient life.
II
Irving felt that with such an artist to help—archæologist, specialist,
and genius in one—he would be able to put before an audience such work
as would not only charm them by its beauty and interest them in its
novelty, but would convince by its suitability. For there is an enormous
aid to conviction in a story when those who follow it accept from the
beginning in good faith the things of common knowledge and use which are
put before them. I often say myself that the faith which still exists is
to be found more often in a theatre than in a church. When an audience
go into a playhouse which is not connected in their minds with the habit
of deceit they are unconsciously prepared to accept all things _ab
initio_ in the simple and direct manner of childhood. When therefore
what they see is _vraisemblable_—with the manifest appearance of truth
to something—all the powers of intellectual examination and working
habit come into force in the right direction.
In that summer of 1879 when Irving announced _Coriolanus_ he also
announced several other plays.
It was not, of course, his intention to produce these plays all at once,
but one by one as occasion served. As has been seen, the putting on of
_The Merchant of Venice_ and its phenomenal success shelved or postponed
most of the plays then announced; but Irving did not lose sight of
_Coriolanus_. One morning in the following winter, whilst Sir Laurence
Alma-Tadema, as he himself told me, was in his studio in his house in
North Gate, Regent’s Park, he heard the sound of sleigh bells coming
over the bridge. Naturally his thoughts went back to _The Bells_ and
Irving, for no one who has seen the play can hear the sound unexpectedly
without the thought. He heard the sound stop at his own gate; and whilst
wondering what it could mean Irving was announced. He was accompanied by
Mr. W. L. Ashmead Bartlett, who afterwards took his present name on his
marriage to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Irving at once entered upon the
subject of his visit; and the great painter was charmed to entertain it.
As was usual with him when working on a new play, Irving had a rough
scenario in his mind, and he and Alma-Tadema spoke of it then and there.
Irving could tell him of the scenes he wanted and give some hints not
only as to their practical use but of the ideas which he wished them to
convey. When he had gone Alma-Tadema took down his Shakespeare and began
his own study of the play. The continuous success of _The Merchant of
Venice_ gave him ample time, and his studies and designs were unique and
lovely.
III
As we know, the production of _Coriolanus_ did not take place till
twenty-two years later; but all through 1880 and 1881 Alma-Tadema had
the matter in hand. In those years the high policy of his theatre
management was a good deal changed. When Irving had experience of Ellen
Terry’s remarkable powers and gifts he wisely determined to devote to
them, so far as was possible, the remaining years of her youth. She had
now been twenty-five years on the stage; and though she began in her
very babyhood—at eight years old—the flight of time has to be
considered, for the future if not for the past. She was now thirty-three
years of age; in the very height of her beauty and charm, and to all
seeming still in her girlhood. He therefore arranged _Romeo and Juliet_
as the next Shakespearean production. This was followed in time by _Much
Ado About Nothing_, _Twelfth Night_, _Olivia_, _Faust_—all plays that
showed her in her brightness and pathos; and so _Coriolanus_ was kept
postponed. But well into 1881 it was still being worked on, and in those
days I had many visits to the studio of Alma-Tadema.
IV
Let me give an instance of his thoroughness in his art work.
Once when in his studio I saw him occupied on a beautiful piece of
painting, a shrub with a myriad of branches laden with berries and but
few leaves, through which was seen the detail of the architecture of the
marble building beyond. The picture was then almost finished. The next
time I came I found him still hard at work on the same painting; but it
was not nearly so far advanced. Dissatisfied with the total effect, he
had painted out the entire background and was engaged on a new and quite
different one. The labour involved in this stupendous change almost made
me shudder. It needs but a small amount of thought to understand the
infinite care and delicacy of touch to complete an elaborate
architectural drawing between the gaps of those hundreds of spreading
twigs.
V
This devotion to his art is often one of the touchstones of the success
of an artist in any medium; the actor, or the singer, or the musician as
well as the worker in any of the plastic arts.
I remember Irving telling me of a conversation he had with the late W.
H. Vanderbilt when, after lunch in his own house in Fifth Avenue, the
great millionaire took him round his beautiful picture gallery. He was
pointing out the portrait of himself finished not long before by
Meissonier, and gave many details of how the great painter did his work
and the extraordinary care which he took. Vanderbilt used to give long
sittings, and Meissonier, to aid the tedium of his posing, had mirrors
fitted up in such a way that he could see the work being executed. “Do
you know,” the millionaire concluded, “that sometimes after a long
sitting he would take his cloth and wipe out everything he had done in
the day’s work. And I calculated roughly that every touch of his brush
cost me five dollars!”
VI
When in 1896 Irving produced _Cymbeline_, Alma-Tadema undertook to
design and supervise the picturesque side; or, as it was by his wish
announced in the programme: “kindly acted as adviser in the production
of the play.”
He chose a time of England when architecture expressed itself mainly in
wood; natural enough when it was a country of forest. It is not a play
allowing of much display of fine dresses, and Irving never under any
circumstances wished a play to be unsuitably mounted. The opportunities
of picturesque effect came, in this instance, in beautiful scenery.
LI
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.
I
It was to Irving an intense pleasure to work with Sir Edward
Burne-Jones. The painter seemed to bring to whatever he had in hand a
sort of concentration of all his great gifts, and to apply them with
unsparing purpose and energy. His energy was of that kind which seems to
accomplish without strenuous effort; after all it is the waste of force
and not its use which proclaims itself in the doing. This man had such
mighty gifts that in his work there was no waste; all the creations of
his teeming brain were so fine in themselves that they simply stood
ready for artistic use. His imagination working out through perfected
art, peopled a whole world of its own and filled that world around them
with beautiful things. This world had been opened to Irving as to every
one else who admired it. But when the player came adventuring into it,
the painter displayed to him a vast of hidden treasures. There was
simply no end to his imaginative ideas, his artistic efforts, his
working into material beauty the thoughts which flitted through his
mind. As a colourist he was supreme, and he could use colour as a medium
of conveying ideas to the same effect as others used form. His own power
of dealing with the beauties of form was supreme.
To work with such an artist was to Irving a real joy. He simply revelled
in the task. Every time they met it was to him a fresh stimulation.
Burne-Jones, too, seemed to be stimulated; the stage had always been to
him a fairyland of its own, but he had not had artistic dealings with
it. Now he entered it with full power to let himself run free. The play
which he undertook for Irving, _King Arthur_, was of the period which he
had made his own: that mystic time when life had single purposes and the
noblest prevailed the most; when beauty was a symbol of inner worth;
when love in some dainty as well as some holy form showed that even
flesh, which was God’s handiwork, was not base.
In the working out of the play each day saw some new evidence of the
painter’s thought; the roughest sketch given as a direction or a light
to scene-painter or property maker or costumier was in itself a thing of
beauty. I veritably believe that Irving was sorry when the production of
the play was complete. He so enjoyed the creative process that the
completion was a lesser good.
Regarding human nature, which was Irving’s own especial study,
Burne-Jones had a mind tuned to the same key as his own. To them both
the things which were basic and typal were closest. The varieties of
mankind were of lesser importance than the species. The individual was
the particular method and opportunity of conveyance of an idea; and, as
such, was of original importance. To each of the two great artists such
individual grew in his mind, and ever grew; till in the end, on canvas
or before the footlights, the being lived.
II
It would be hard to better illustrate the mental attitude of both to men
and type and individual than by some of the stories which Burne-Jones
loved to tell and Irving to hear. The painter had an endless collection
of stories of all sorts; but those relating to children seemed closest
to his heart. In our meetings on the stage or at supper in the Beefsteak
Room, or on those delightful Sunday afternoons when he allowed a friend
to stroll with him round his studio, there was always some little tale
breathing the very essence of human nature.
I remember once when he told us an incident in the life of his daughter,
who was then a most beautiful girl and is now a most beautiful woman,
Mrs. J. W. Mackail. When she was quite a little girl, she came home from
school one day and with thoughtful eyes and puckered brows asked her
mother:
“Mother, can you tell me why it is that whenever I see a little boy
crying in the street I always want to kiss him; and when I see a little
girl crying I want to slap her?”
III