have any idea of the vast expenditure necessary to hold success. A play
may be a success or a failure, and its life must have a natural
termination; but a theatre has to go on at almost equal pressure and
expense through bad times and good alike. It is necessary for the
management to have a large reserve of strength ready to be used if need
arises. This implies ceaseless expenditure; a portion of which never can
be repaid because the plays which involve it have to be abandoned. It is
really too much work for one man to have to think of the policy of the
future, and of carrying it into effect, whilst at the same time he has
to work as an artist in the running play. No monetary reward would atone
for such labour; only ambition can give the spur. Things, therefore, are
so constituted in the theatrical world that the ambitious artist _must_
be his own manager. And only those strong enough to be both artist and
man of business can win through. The strain of ceaseless debt must
always be the portion of any one who endeavours to uphold serious drama
in a country where subsidy is not a custom. In the future, the State or
the Municipality may find it a duty to support such effort, on the
ground of public good. Otherwise the artist must pay with shortened life
the price of his high endeavour. Light performances may and generally do
succeed, but good plays seriously undertaken must always be at great
risk to the venturer. For more than twenty-five years Irving did for
England that which in other nations is furthered by the State; and his
theatre was known and respected all over the world. This entailed not
only hospitality in all forms to foreign artists, but to many, many
strangers attracted by the fame of his undertaking, and anxious to meet
so famous a man in person. This duty Irving never shirked; he had ever a
ready hand for any stranger, and in the long career of his ministration
of the duties of hospitality he actually aided, so far as one man could
do, the popularity of his own country amongst the nations of the world.
Such men are the true Ambassadors of Peace, as well as National
benefactors. Reputation for hospitality and charity is a factor in the
enlargement of the demands made on these. When duty called, Irving was
never found wanting, in this or any other form.
But still through all it must be remembered that the more he had to
spend the harder he had to work to earn the wherewithal to do it. When I
came to him first, six performances each week in heavy plays was deemed
sufficient work for the strongest; but as time went on a _matinée_ was
added. And for some twenty years seven performances a week was the
working rule. In light, amusing, or unemotional plays this is not too
much; for when a run is on, the ordinary work of rehearsal is suspended.
But for heavy plays it is too much. Still what is one to do who is
playing for the big stakes of life? Brain and body, nerve and soul have
to be ground up in the effort to hold the place already won. Irving was
determined from the very first to strain every nerve for the honour of
his art; for the perfecting of stage work; for his own fame. To these
ends he gave himself, his work, his fortune. He forwent very many of the
ordinary pleasures of life, and laboured unceasingly and without
swerving from his undertaken course. He gave freely in its cause all the
fortune that came to him as quickly as it accrued. It was only when
through shocks of misfortune and the stress of coming age he was unable
to put by the large sums necessary for further developments that he had
to forestall the future temporarily. Bankers are of necessity stern folk
and unless one can give _quid pro quo_ in some shape they are pretty
obdurate as to advances. Therefore it was that now and again, despite
the enormous sums that he earned, he had occasionally to get an advance.
Fortunately, there were friends who were proud and happy to aid him.
Such never lost by their kindness; every advance was punctiliously met,
and the attachment between him and such friends grew ever and ripened.
It would be invidious to mention who those friends were. Some perhaps
would not like their names mentioned, and so “the rest is silence.”
There were not many occasions when such measures were necessary. I only
mention them now lest any of those friends should deem me wanting, in
even such a partial record as this, did I not mention that Henry Irving
had constant and loving friends who held any power in their hands at his
disposal, and were alike glad and proud to help him in the splendid work
which he was doing. Let me, as the only mouthpiece that he now can ever
have, since I alone know all those friends, say that to the last hour of
his life he was grateful to them for their sympathy, and belief, and
timely help; and for all the self-confidence which their trust gave to
him.
III
When after his long illness in 1898–1899 the proposition of selling his
interest in the Lyceum was made to Irving by the Lyceum Theatre Company—
the parent Company—the terms suggested were these:
He was to convey to the Company his lease—of which some eighteen years
were still to run, and all his furniture and fittings in the theatre. He
was for five years—the duration of the contract—to play an annual
engagement of at least a hundred performances at the Lyceum on terms
which were mentioned and which were between 10 per cent. and 25 per
cent. less than he was in the habit of receiving in any other theatre.
He was to hand over to the Company one-fourth of all his profits made by
acting elsewhere, he guaranteeing to play on tour at least four months
in each year. He was to give the Company free use of such of his scenery
and properties as were not in his own use. He was to pay all the
expenses of production of plays in the first year, and in the others 60
per cent. of the same. For the first season he was to guarantee the
Company a minimum of £100 for their share of each performance. He was to
pay all the stage expenses, and half of the advertisements.
For this the Company were to pay him down £26,500 in cash and £12,500 in
fully paid shares in proportion of the two classes, viz., £100,000 6 per
cent. preference shares and £70,000 ordinary shares.
I protested to Irving against the terms. I had already worked out the
figures of results, according to such data as were available, of this
scheme and also of an alternative one, in case he wished to abandon or
alter the one on which we had already decided. The difference was that
according to the alternative scheme, he would at the end of five years,
in addition to the total of profits realisable by the Company scheme, be
still in possession of his theatre, scenery, and property of all kinds.
That I was correct has been shown by the unhappy result of the Company
enterprise. The Company lost almost persistently except in the seasons
when Irving played. The one exception was, I believe, when William
Gillette played _Sherlock Holmes_, a piece which Irving recommended the
directors to accept. I was present at its first night in New York, and
saw at once its London possibilities.
The Company lasted from the beginning of 1899 till the end of the season
of 1902. During this period of less than four years the total amount in
cash accruing to the Company from Irving’s acting was roughly £29,000.
In estimating this amount I took as the basis of the Company’s expenses
the cost of running the theatre in our own time for the number of weeks
covering the time of Irving’s seasons with the Company. This allowed as
liberal an amount as our own management, which was carried out on a much
more generous scale. I excluded only the item of rental, which, as the
Company was its own landlord, would be represented by the productiveness
of the capital. The above amount would, roughly, have paid during each
of the whole four years in which the contract lasted the preference
shareholders their whole 6 per cent. and the ordinary shareholders over
1½ per cent. in each entire year, leaving seven whole months of each
year, exclusive of summer holidays, for earning the 4 per cent. dividend
on the £120,000 mortgage debentures, and increasing the dividend on the
ordinary shares.
It will from the above figures be seen that the contract which Irving
made with the Lyceum Company was not in any way a beneficial one for
him, but an excellent one for them.
I am particular about giving these figures in detail, for at some of the
meetings of the Company there was the usual angry “heckling” of the
directorate regarding losses; and there were not lacking those who
alleged that Irving was in some way to blame for the result. But I am
bound to say that when, at the meeting in 1903, I thought it necessary
to put a stop to such misconception and gave the rough figures showing
the results of his playing during the time the contract existed, my
statement was received even by the disappointed shareholders with loud
and continuous cheers—the only cheers which I ever heard at a meeting of
the Company. I honestly believe that there was not one person in the
room who was not genuinely and heartily glad to be reassured from such
an authoritative source as myself as to Irving’s position with the
Company.
The cancellation of the contract between Irving and the Lyceum Theatre
Company was in no way due to any fault or default of his. It became
necessary solely because the Company was unable to fulfil its part. The
London County Council, in accordance with some new regulations, called
on the Company to make certain structural alterations in the theatre.
The directors said they could not afford to make them as their funds
were exhausted; and so the theatre had to remain closed. At that time
Irving had already undertaken vast responsibilities with regard to the
play of _Dante_, for which he had made contracts with painters and
costumiers, and had engaged artists. It was vitally necessary that he
should have a theatre wherein to play; and so there was no alternative
but to annul the contract. Even as it was, he had to take on his own
shoulders the whole of the vast cost of the production upon which he had
entered as a joint concern.
In fine, Irving’s dealings with the Company may be thus summed up. He
received in all for his property, lease, goodwill, fixtures, furniture,
the use of his stock of scenery and properties, and a fourth of his
profits elsewhere, £39,000 paid as follows: cash, £26,500; shares,
£12,500. He repaid by his work £29,000 in cash. The shares he received
proved valueless.[6] He gave, in fact, his property and £2500 for
nothing;—and he lost about two years of his working life.
Footnote 6:
The preference shares at the break-up sold for, as well as I remember,
_seven pence_ for each fully paid share of one pound sterling. He
would never sell his shares lest his doing so might injure the
property of the Company. They were only parted with at the winding-up,
when the Receiver sold, on his own authority, all unapplied-for
shares.
I should like to say, on my own account, and for my own protection,
inasmuch as I was Sir Henry Irving’s business manager, that from first
to last I had absolutely no act or part in the formation of the Lyceum
Theatre Company—in its promotion, flotation, or working. Even my
knowledge of it was confined to matters touched on in the contract with
Irving. From the first I had no information as to its purposes, scope or
methods, outside the above. I did not take a single share till it began
to look queer with regard to its future; I then bought from a friend
five shares for which I paid par value. This I did in order that I might
have a right to attend the meetings. Later, in 1903, when shares were
selling at all sorts of prices I bought some in the open market. This
was simply as a speculation, as I regarded the freehold of the Lyceum as
a valuable property which might eventually realise a price which would
make my investment at the prevailing figures a good one. These shares I
protected on the winding-up and reconstruction of the Company with an
assessment of 25 per cent. of their face value. But finally, seeing the
conditions under which the new Company was about to work, I sold them in
the usual way through my broker.
As a matter of fact I was on the Atlantic or in America at the time the
parent company or syndicate—to whom it was that Irving had sold his
property—was formed. When I arrived home this association had become
merged in the Lyceum Theatre Company which had been floated, and of
which the whole capital had been subscribed. Not for nearly a year
afterwards did I even see a copy of the prospectus of the Company.
LXXV
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
I
“There is a tide in the affairs of men.” For twenty-five years it flowed
for Henry Irving without let or lull. From the production of _The Bells_
in November 1871 he became famous; and thence on he bore himself so well
that with the exception of the disgruntled few who grudge success to any
one, he was accorded by all an unquestioned supremacy in his chosen art.
For a full quarter of a century there was nothing but ever-increasing
esteem and honour and position; an undeviating prosperity which made all
things possible to the ambitious actor. True, the success was
accompanied throughout by endless labour and self-sacrifice, and by
grinding responsibility. His life was more strenuous than the lives of
most successful men. For an actor’s work is altogether personal, and
when in addition to the practice of his art he undertakes the added
stress and risk of management such, too, is altogether personal. But,
after all, labour and responsibility are the noblest roads by which a
man may travel towards honour. By any other way success is merely the
outcome of hazard.
But the tide must turn some time—otherwise the force would be not a tide
but a current. The turning came on the night of 19th December 1896—the
night of his production of _Richard III._ A night of unqualified
success—as should be when high-water mark is reached. A night which
seemed to crown the personal triumph of the years. After the performance
and when the cheering crowd had taken their reluctant way, Irving had a
large gathering on the stage. Such had become a custom on first and last
nights of the season, and now and again on marked occasions. They were
very delightful opportunities for large and comprehensive hospitality,
enjoyed, I think, by all. So soon as the curtain fell the scenery would
be put rapidly into the “scene docks” and the stage left clear. Then the
caterers, who had everything ready, would place long tables round three
sides of the stage and prepare a cold “standing” supper for all who were
expected. During this time Irving would have rapidly changed his costume
for evening dress; so that by the time the waiting guests in the
auditorium were beginning to file in on the stage through the iron door
in the proscenium O.P., he would meet them coming from his
dressing-room. I used to stand at the door myself so as to see that no
chance guests whose presence was welcome were denied. For very often
there were in the house some whom Irving would like to welcome, and of
whose presence we were ignorant to the last. The whole proceeding was an
informal one. There were no invitations except such verbal ones as I
conveyed myself. On such occasions there would be from three to six
hundred guests on the stage, a large proportion of whom were persons
whose names were at least widely known; representatives of art and
letters, of statesmanship and the various forms of public life; of the
great social world, of the professions, of commerce—of the whole great
world of personal endeavour.
On this particular occasion there was a large gathering. When the
curtain went up on the empty proscenium, the big stage seemed a solid
mass of men and women. One could tell Irving’s whereabouts by the press
of friends thronging round to congratulate him on the renewal of his
success in _Richard III._ of twenty years before.
Little by little as time wore away the crowd thinned. When the last had
gone Irving and a very dear friend of his, Professor (afterwards Sir
James) Dewar, went for a while to the Garrick Club. After the strain of
such a night sleep was shy and the kindest thing that any friend could
do was to keep with him and talk over matters old and new, so as to make
a break between strain and rest. That night was a strangely exciting one
to Irving. On it he had reproduced after a lapse of just twenty years
one of the greatest and most surprising successes of his earlier life.
For _Richard III._ when he played it in 1877 was a new thing to all who
saw it. Clement Scott, writing of it in the _Daily Telegraph_, had said:
“The enjoyment derived from the performance was undoubtedly heightened
by the pleasurable astonishment with which the playgoer made the
unexpected discovery of a new source of dramatic delight. It is not
often that a frequenter of theatres can recall in the course of a long
experience one particular night when the channels of thought seemed to
be flushed by a tide of new sensations.”
On the night of its revival all the old triumph came back afresh. No
wonder that the player was too high-strung to rest. From the Garrick the
two friends walked to Albemarle Street where Dewar had his rooms in the
Royal Institution. There they sat and smoked for a while and discussed
the philosophy of Acting and the form of education which would be most
beneficial for Irving’s sons. When Irving rose to go home—he lived
literally “round the corner” in 15A Grafton Street, Dewar went with him.
Irving insisted on his going in for a few minutes. This he acceded to,
anxious that the super-wearied man should not feel lonely at such a
time. After a cigar Dewar left. It was then coming daylight, and Irving
announced his intention of taking a bath before turning in. Dewar left
him tranquil and now ready for his needed rest.
The stairs in the Grafton Street “upper part” were steep and narrow, and
Irving in the dim light of morning which was stealing into the staircase
slipped a foot on the top stair. Unfortunately on the narrow landing
stood an old oak chest. His knee as he slipped struck this, and the blow
and the strain of recovery ruptured the ligatures under the knee cap.
When in the morning the surgeon who had been sent for saw him he
declared that it would be utterly impossible for him to play for some
time. Further advice was even more pessimistic, placing the period at
months.
The disaster of that morning was the beginning of many which struck, and
struck, and struck again as though to even up his long prosperity to the
normal measure allotted to mankind.
It was ten weeks before he was able to play again. Ellen Terry had gone
to Homburg—whither she had been recommended—the day after _Cymbeline_—
which had preceded _Richard III._—had been taken off. It was the end of
January before she could give up her “cure” and return to London. She
played _Olivia_ for three weeks with good effect. We had tried
_Cymbeline_ for a week after Christmas; but with Irving and Ellen Terry
out of the cast the receipts were such that though the salaries, rent
and such running expenses had to be paid in any case, it was cheaper to
close than go on. The entire income did not nearly pay the expenses of
keeping the theatre open instead of shut.
That accident of a foot-slip cost Irving two months and a half of
illness and an out-of-pocket expense of over six thousand pounds. This
instead of the prosperous winter season which had already seemed
assured.
II
A little more than a year afterwards, February 1898, came the burning of
the storage, which I have already described, and the effect of which was
so permanently disastrous in crippling effort. Eight months after that
came the greatest calamity of his life.
The disasters of these three years, 1896–7–8, seemed cumulative and
consistent. The first struck his activity; the second crippled his
resources; the third destroyed his health.
III
To any human being health is a boon. To an actor, _quâ_ actor, it is
existence. During the provincial tour in the autumn of 1898 all was
going well. We had got through the earlier weeks of the tour when we
had, through very hot weather, played at some of the lesser places and
were now in the big cities. Birmingham and Edinburgh had shown fine
results of the week’s work in each place, and we were in the midst of
the first week in Glasgow—always a stronghold of Irving. On the Thursday
night, 13th October, we were playing _Madame Sans-Gêne_ to a fine house
and all was going splendidly. Just before the curtain went up on the
second act, in which Napoleon makes his appearance, Irving sent for me
to my office. I came at once to his dressing-room. I found him sitting
down dressed for his part. His face was drawn with pain at each breath.
When I came in he said:
“I think there must be something wrong with me. Every breath is like a
sword-stab. I don’t think I ought to be suffering like this without
seeing some one.” As I saw that he was really ill, I asked if I might go
and dismiss the audience. But he would not hear of it. Never in his life
have I known him let any pain of his own keep him from his work. He
said:
“I shall be able to get through all right; but when I have seen a doctor
we may have to make some change for to-morrow.” I hurried off to send
for a doctor, and as his call came he went on the stage. The doctor
arrived during the last act, but he could not see him till the end of
the play. Then the doctor said he feared he was seriously ill, and
hurried him off to his hotel—and to bed. A careful examination showed
that he had both pneumonia and pleurisy. Two nurses of special
excellence were picked out and preparations were made for a lengthy
illness.
The bill for next night was _The Merchant of Venice_, and Norman Forbes,
almost without preparation, played Shylock. The tour went on by Irving’s
wish, for the livelihood of some seventy people depended on it. The ten
weeks which it lasted cost him a very considerable sum of money.
The cause of his illness was a chill he received the previous Sunday.
That day the Company went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, but he remained as
he had an engagement to lunch at Dalmeny with Lord Rosebery. In the
afternoon he drove back to Edinburgh and took train. At that time,
however, the new station of the North British Railway was in process of
erection and had reached a stage in which the road from Princes Street
down to the level of the line was blocked during reconstruction; so that
it was necessary to walk down. There had been a good deal of rain that
afternoon and the torn roadway was full of water-pools. In walking
through the imperfectly lighted way he got his feet wet and had to sit
in this condition in a carriage without a foot-warmer during the hour’s
journey to Glasgow. He did not feel the ill effects immediately, but the
seeds of the disease, or rather the diseases, had been laid.
Of course during his illness he had every help and care that could be.
But his case was a bad one. For seven weeks he lay ill in Glasgow.
During this time I almost lived in trains, seeing the work started and
finished in each town and in the meantime travelling to Glasgow and to
London, where immense and responsible work for the future had to be
done. Forbes-Robertson had then the Lyceum for an autumn season, but his
tenancy expired at Christmas. So we arranged that the Carl Rosa Opera
Company should play for six weeks. Then Martin Harvey would produce a
play, _The Only Way_, a version of Charles Dickens’ _A Tale of Two
Cities_, dramatised by Freeman Wills. Our negotiations for letting the
theatre were very difficult, for as we did not know when it would be
possible for Irving to play, we had in every case to have the option of
bringing the temporary tenancy to an end at any time to suit us. This
involved that every arrangement made by any one renting the theatre
should contain similar conditions with other people. Nevertheless,
through all difficulties we arranged for the provisional occupation of
the theatre at a good rental right up to the end of July.
As I used to see Irving every few days I could note his progress—down or
up. At first, of course, he got worse and worse; weaker, and suffering
more pain. He had never in his life been anything but lean, but now as
he lost flesh the outline of his features grew painfully keen. The
cheeks and chin and lips, which he had kept clean-shaven all his life,
came out stubbly with white hair. At that time his hair was iron-grey,
but no more. I remember one early morning when I came into the
sitting-room and found his faithful valet, Walter, in tears. When I
asked him the cause—for I feared it was death—he said through his sobs:
“He is like Gregory Brewster!”—the old soldier in _Waterloo_. Walter did
not come into the room with me; he feared he would break down and so do
harm. When I stole into the room Irving had just waked. He was glad to
see me, but he looked very old and weak. Poor Walter’s description was
sadly accurate. Indeed he realised the pathetic picture of the dying Sir
John Falstaff given by Mrs. Quickly: “His nose was as sharp as a
pen....”