Part 12

I met him first at the Old Albion Tavern in Drury Lane--a favourite haunt of actors that has long passed away--and I remember then that the man himself impressed me more deeply than any of the few impersonations in which I had seen him. Already in his face and in his bearing he contrived to convey a curious sense of power and authority that he had not yet found the means to incorporate completely in his work upon the stage. I found myself vaguely wondering why he should have chosen the actor’s calling as a means of impressing himself upon his generation, and yet at the time I felt a full assurance that in that or in some other walk of life he was bound to leave a mark upon his time. Johnson once said of Burke that if a stranger should take shelter beside him from the rain, he would part from him with the feeling that chance had brought him in contact with a remarkable man. Something of that same feeling was left in me as the impression drawn from my first meeting with Irving; and it is perhaps characteristic of that unnameable kind of force his personality suggested, that even at the zenith of his career, when he had won complete authority over a public that at first only reluctantly rallied to his banner, there was still room left for a measure of doubt as to whether his powers might not have found a fuller exercise in a different realm. It is, I think, however, an attribute of all the very highest achievement in any art that its authors, even when their special aptitude for the chosen medium of expression is full and complete, possess, by right of their genius, something more and something different in kind from that particular endowment which the art they have adopted calls into exercise. In Irving’s case, this thought marked itself more deeply, because, as I have already hinted, his command of the special resources of his art was by no means complete, and his whole career may be said to have been a struggle, fiercer and more obstinate than most men have to wage, to secure, through the medium of the theatre, a full recognition of the latent forces he undoubtedly possessed.

He was conscious of that himself, and would often openly avow it; very conscious, I mean, that, in a calling in which there is no escape from the physical presence of the artist, he had much to contend with. It made him quickly appreciative of the kind of perfection achieved by others in whom the motive and the means of expression were more finely attuned; and he never wearied in later days of appraising this quality in the acting of Ellen Terry, whose varied gifts in the moment of perfection were combined in a fashion so easy and so absolute as sometimes almost to rob her of the praise due to conscious art.

Such appreciation would sometimes, though not so often, be extended to the comrades of his own sex; and I recollect, during the time when William Terriss was a member of his company, he would comment, with a sense of half-humorous envy, upon the ease and grace with which the younger actor could at once establish himself in the favour of his audience. But this recognition of the qualities he knew himself not to possess never, I think, for a moment shook his deeper conviction that, when he could subdue to the service of his art the more refractory elements of his own physical personality, he had a message to convey which would carry a deeper and more lasting impression.

And he proved by his career that he had a true title to that conviction. Force was always there, force that showed itself almost to the point of terror in his early impersonation of “The Bells.” But sweetness and grace came not till later, and was only won as the reward of patient and unceasing effort: it was the case of the honeycomb bedded in the carcase of the lion, and it took all a lion’s strength to reveal it to the world. In the man himself, however, as distinguished from his art, it was present from the first; and I recall, in those earlier days of our friendship, that a certain grave courtliness of bearing was among the first things that struck me. A certain sense of loneliness and isolation always belonged to him--the index, as it seemed to me, of a mind that was conscious that in his case the road towards fame must be trodden alone; that such perfection as he could ultimately achieve could borrow little from example, but must be due to his own unaided subjugation of whatever in his individuality impeded his progress.

But this suggestion was never so far obtruded as to burden the freedom of personal intercourse, and my long association with him, in work or at play, is rich in the remembrance of many varied moods of a sweet and affectionate character. In common with all men who remain permanently attractive in companionship, he had a quick and delicate sense of humour, sometimes half-mischievous in its exercise, and touched now and then with a slightly saturnine quality, but always ready at call--even in his most serious moods.

One evening during a brief holiday with him in Paris it was somewhat roughly put to the test. We stood in a group of spectators watching the agile performances of some dancers who were exhibiting the wayward figures of the Can-Can, when one of the more adventurous of the troupe, greatly daring, suddenly lifted her foot and neatly removed the hat that Irving was wearing. The other spectators, some of whom, I think, had recognised the actor, and all of whom, as I had remarked, were attracted by his personality, stood in momentary wonder as to how this audacious act of familiarity might be received, and I thought that I myself detected in Irving’s face a momentary struggle between the dignity that was natural to him and the genial acceptance of the spirit of the place in which we found ourselves. But it was only momentary, and when he acknowledged with hearty laughter the adroitness of the performer, the Parisians around us found themselves free to indulge in the merriment which the look upon his grave, pale face had for the time held in check.

Upon such lighter phases of the life of the French capital Irving looked with a half-sinister tolerance.

That aspect of the character of the French people made no sympathetic appeal to him, but he watched their antics with unceasing interest rather as he might have watched the uncouth gambols of animals in a menagerie. But there was one of the shows of Paris which positively fascinated him, and that was the Morgue. Irving’s mind was always attracted to the study of crime; he loved to trace its motives, to examine and to probe the various modes of the criminal character; and so it happened that, on one pretext or another, our morning wanderings nearly always led us back to this gruesome exhibition. One day the fancy seized him that a man who passed before one of the corpses and then returned to gaze upon it again was possibly the murderer himself; and afterwards, while we were breakfasting at Bignons, he occupied himself with a sense of keen enjoyment in tracing in imagination the motive of the crime and the means by which it had been carried out.

At that time his thoughts were greatly occupied with the proposed revival of _Macbeth_, and on several evenings at the Hotel Bristol we sat long into the night discussing every phase of that greatest of all poetic tragedies. I think Irving felt--partly, perhaps, as the result of our many discussions--that in his earlier presentation of the play he had dwelt too insistently upon the purely criminal side of Macbeth’s character to the neglect of its larger and more imaginative issues. I know, at any rate, that he was so far impressed with my view of the play, that he asked me to write an essay upon the subject which was to appear simultaneously with the revival; and he did this in part, I believe, because the view I entertained of the interplay of motive between Macbeth and his guilty partner went far to supplant that masculine conception of Lady Macbeth’s character which had hitherto been imposed upon the world mainly through the genius of Mrs. Siddons. The essay, no less than the performance, proved, as we had expected, the mark for much hostile criticism; but the revival--interesting to me in many respects--illustrated with surprising force the extraordinary advance in his art which had been made by Irving since the earlier production of the play--an advance not merely of technical resource, but even more as showing the larger and profounder spirit in which he could now approach the poetic drama.

Nearly all our excursions abroad were in some way associated with work projected or already in hand, and it was while he was preparing Mr. W. G. Wills’s version of _Faust_ that we made together a long and delightful excursion to Nuremberg. Irving was very anxious to find something that was both quaint and characteristic for the scene of Margaret’s Garden, and although he was not very fond of physical exercise, he never wearied of our constant tramps among the narrower streets of the old German city in inquisitive search for something that should fit with the ideal that he had in his mind. We trespassed freely wherever we found an open gateway; and at last, having failed to discover what was exactly suited to the purpose, we set out one day for Rothenburg on the Tauber--one of the most perfect and complete examples of a mediaeval city, and where, as we were assured, we should find richer material than was provided in Nuremberg itself.

At that time the journey between Nuremberg and Rothenburg had to be made mainly by road; the railway carried us only half-way, and then we had a drive of several hours before reaching our destination. I think it was this that mainly attracted Irving in undertaking the excursion. All through his life he clearly loved the pleasure of a drive; and during a week I spent with him at Lucerne, our every day, for six or seven hours at a stretch, was employed in exploring the shores of the lake. Rothenburg, as it chanced, furnished us with little new material towards the object of which we were in quest, and on our return to Albert Durer’s city, feeling that he had exhausted all the available means of inquiry, he at once, with characteristic promptitude, summoned the scenic artist, Mr. Hawes Craven, from London in order that he might make notes on the spot of the several scenes of the drama.

At home or abroad, Irving was always at his best as a host, and, whether in the larger entertainments which he sometimes gave on the stage of the Lyceum, or in the more intimate gatherings in the Beefsteak Room, he presided with admirable grace over a company that was often strangely varied in its composition--the most distinguished statesmen, soldiers, and men of letters, meeting in happy association with chosen members of his own profession. Two little incidents recur to me which illustrate in their different ways that sense of humour, sometimes innocently mischievous, and sometimes again employed for a long settled purpose of deliberate attack. The first of these occasions was a dinner given in honour of the members of the Saxe-Meiningen company on the stage of the theatre. I had been driving with him during the day, and happened to mention, to his manifest surprise, that I had not seen their great performance of the play of _Julius Caesar_ which was making a considerable stir in London. He said nothing more at the time, but at the end of the evening’s feast, after having himself in a few words gracefully welcomed his distinguished guests, he announced that he would now call upon Mr. Comyns Carr, who he felt sure would do ample justice to the exquisite art of these German players. I can see now the smile upon his face as he sat down, and left me to my task, of which I acquitted myself with at least so much skill, that he was the only one among those present who was aware that I was wholly unacquainted with the subject I had been summoned to discuss.

The other incident to which I have referred had a more serious import. During his first visit to America his feelings had been gravely outraged, and not on his own account alone, by a series of scandalous articles which had appeared in one of the most popular of New York journals. Our party that evening at supper in the Beefsteak Room included a popular American Colonel, a great friend of Irving’s, and, as Irving well knew, a great friend also of the wealthy proprietor of this offending journal. The scene was wholly characteristic of Irving, who rarely forgot an injury, although he was content sometimes to lie long in wait for the fitting occasion to strike a counter-blow. In a genial prelude he led our American friend on in a growing crescendo of praise of the amiable qualities of the wealthy newspaper proprietor. “You know so-and-so,” he innocently remarked to his guest, as he settled himself down in his chair, in an attitude that not uncommonly conveyed to those who knew him that danger might be impending. “Know him!” replied the innocent Colonel, “I have known him all my life.” “Quite so,” said Irving; “good fellow, isn’t he?” “Good! He’s one of the very best fellows that was ever born.” “The kind of man,” pursued Irving, “who would never do an ungenerous or an unkind thing?” And at this, lured on to his doom, the unsuspecting Colonel burst forth in such unrestrained eulogy of his friend, as to depict for the admiration of those present a character of almost unchallenged perfection. “No doubt; no doubt,” responded Irving; “no doubt he is all that you say”; and then, in words all the deadlier for the perfect quietude of tone in which they were uttered, he added: “But he is also one of the damned’st scoundrels that ever stepped the earth.” The genial Colonel was not unnaturally taken aback; but before he could make any show of defence, Irving had whipped from his breast-pocket the series of offending articles, and, handing them across the table, made the simple comment, “I thought, old friend, you might be interested to see them.”

It was, I think, in the beginning of the year 1892 that Irving invited me to write for him a play on the subject of King Arthur. The theme had long been in his mind, and before his death Mr. Wills had completed a version, which proved, however, unacceptable to the actor. At first Irving thought that I might find it possible to recast and remodel Wills’s work; but it was afterwards agreed between us that I should be free to work out my own design. When my task was completed, Irving and Miss Terry came one night to dine with us in Blandford Square. He brought with him also his little dog Fussy, the constant companion of many years. And when dinner was over, he settled himself down in an arm-chair, with the dog upon his knees, prepared for an ordeal that is never wholly agreeable either to the author or his auditor. I know that I was nervous enough, as I always am on such occasions; and when I was about half-way through, the audible sounds of snoring which reached my ears made me fancy in my morbid state of sensitiveness that I had failed to grip or to hold the attention of the man I so strongly desired to please. Still I plodded on, not daring to lift my eyes from the book, and still the stertorous sounds continued, until at last, exasperated beyond endurance, I closed the book, with the abrupt announcement that I felt it useless to go on. “What do you mean?” inquired Irving, in blank amazement. “Why, you were asleep,” I replied; but even as I spoke, I perceived the ridiculous blunder into which I had fallen, for the snoring still continued without interruption, and, lifting my eyes, I saw Miss Terry, with laughing gesture, pointing to the sleeping terrier still resting upon Irving’s knees. I had “tried it on the dog,” and it was the dog I had failed to please.

My association with Irving during the preparation of _King Arthur_ was wholly interesting and delightful. I had been warned by those who had long worked with him in the theatre that Irving was intolerant of interference, and that I would do well not to assume any position of authority in the direction of the rehearsals. My own experience, however, completely belied this warning; from the first he treated me with the utmost consideration, and invited, rather than repressed, the suggestions I had to make. His own work at rehearsal was always deeply interesting to watch, though it often revealed little more than the mechanical part of his own performance. This, however, he fixed with absolute exactitude, and the minute invention of detail which he displayed sufficed to suggest that in his own private study of the part this fabric of mechanism was already wedded to the emotional message he intended to convey. As a rule, he was word-perfect before the rehearsals of any play began, and this left him free to bestow infinite patience and pains upon the work of others. He would go through the whole of any one of the minor parts, instructing the actor in every detail of gesture and movement; and when it came to scenes in which he himself was concerned, he knew precisely--and could precisely realise--the pace and the tone that were needed to achieve the effect he desired.

A SENSE OF HUMOUR

I suppose no man at this time of day would have the temerity to hazard a definition of humour. It has been often attempted, never, however, with any convincing success; and sometimes with such cumbrous elaboration of thought as to leave upon the reader only the desolating impression that the philosopher was wholly lacking in the quality which he sought to define. Nor is its presence so common even in those who most loudly deplore its absence in others. I have heard the dullest of men lament the fact that God has denied it to women, and the fleeting smile with which such an announcement is sometimes received by their wives goes far to prove that even the intimate association of marriage has not sufficed for the full appreciation of character.

In its larger and more elemental forms humour is certainly one of the rarest of human attributes; and even the appreciation of humour in that broader and deeper sense is not quite so common as is generally supposed. There is quite a considerable body of seemingly educated opinion which would concede to Shakespeare every gift except the gift of humour; persons who would regard Falstaff as a quite inconsiderable creation, and who would dismiss Dogberry and the nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ as negligible portraits in the great Shakespearean gallery. Once I remember hearing this view put forward very confidently in the presence of a brilliant essayist, whose grave demeanour gave the critic some ground for the belief that his unfavourable opinion would meet with ready acceptance. After holding forth at some length upon what he deemed to be this rather puerile aspect of Shakespeare’s genius, he ventured at the finish upon the direct inquiry: “Now what, sir, do you think of Shakespeare’s humour?” To which the reply came in very quiet tones: “Well, the trouble is, there is no other.”

The proposition need not be taken too literally, but it contains a truth that cannot be ignored. Shakespeare’s humour is as directly and as legitimately the fruit of his wide and deep love of life as the most sublime of his tragic creations. The mind that drew the portrait of Falstaff owns and claims the same large handwriting as that which revealed the character of Macbeth; in both there is an equal measure of mastery. And that, naturally, suggests an element in humour which, without risking the imprudence of definition, may be said to separate it from mere wit. The man of wit may distinguish and reveal the incongruities of life but the humorist, not only perceives them, but loves the characters in which they reside. Among the humorists I have met, this essential gift of sympathy has always, as it seems to me, been a constant and dominating force. It was not my fortune to know Charles Dickens, but his transcendent humour may be said to have dominated all who came within the reach and range of his genius; and it may surely be said of him, as it may be said of Shakespeare, that he not only saw where the sources of laughter lay, but that he loved the thing he made laughable.

This was equally true of Bret Harte, who in our talks together would always willingly own his obligations to the great master; and there is certainly no more touching tribute to Dickens’s genius than is contained in the little poem with which Bret Harte greeted the news of his death. As is not uncommon with men of creative humour, Bret Harte, in ordinary converse, gave little hint of its possession. A man of grave and reticent bearing, he made no attempt to shine as a talker; and as far as my experience went, rarely sought to draw the conversation into literary channels. He deliberately, as it would seem, kept all that concerned his work as an artist in a world apart; and his charm in companionship--which was not inconsiderable--suggested rather the tenderness and sympathy in his outlook on life than his equal gift of humorous appreciation. Those earlier meetings of the Kinsmen Club, of which Bret Harte was a member, brought together many humorous spirits, and amongst them George du Maurier and poor Randolph Caldecott, who, although he too owned a grave exterior, partly due to frailty of health, could on occasion break out into a frolic mood that was irresistible in its sense of fun.

But the draughtsmen for _Punch_ in those days, even when, as in the case of du Maurier and Charles Keene, they could boast a higher measure of purely artistic accomplishment, were hardly comparable in their grasp of what is essentially comic in character with their predecessor, John Leech; and if we turn from the work they produced to the men themselves, it was not the possession of a sense of humour which formed the main element in the social charm they exercised. Du Maurier, in his conversation, never sought to exhibit or to exploit this particular side of his talent; and in our many talks upon the subject of art it was evident that he was rather on the alert to recognise what was seriously beautiful in the work of his contemporaries. He never tired in praise of Millais whom, I think, he ranked as the supreme master of his time; and, on the other hand, he never quite settled in his mind, even up to the end of his life, what measure of welcome to accord to the widely different gifts of Rossetti and Burne-Jones.

But although his talk was, for the most part, serious in tone, he could show himself on occasion to be possessed of the wildest high spirits, and it was then he most clearly revealed the qualities that were distinctively his in virtue of his partly foreign extraction.