Part 8

[H] General Kuropatkin, it will be noticed, calls this night attack "desperate," but does not characterize it as treacherous or unfair. At the time when it occurred, however, the Russian Government denounced it as a dishonorable violation of civilized usage, if not of international law, while the loyal Russian press held Japan up to the scorn of the world as a tricky and treacherous antagonist. It is an interesting but little known fact that the Tsar himself had ordered Admiral Alexeieff to attack the Japanese in the same way, without notice and before any declaration of war had been made. In the historically important series of official dispatches from the archives of Port Arthur, published in the liberal Russian review "Osvobozhdenie" at Stuttgart in 1905 appears the following telegram sent by the Tsar to the Viceroy just after the Japanese had broken off diplomatic relations.

ST. PETERSBURG, JANUARY 26, 1904, O. S.

ALEXEIEFF

PORT ARTHUR.

It is desirable that the Japanese, and not we, should begin military operations. If, therefore, they do not attack us, you must not oppose their landing in southern Korea, or on the eastern coast as far north as Gensan, inclusive. But if their fleet makes a descent upon the western coast, or, without making a descent, goes north of the 38th parallel, you are authorized to attack them, without waiting for the first shot from their side. I rely on you. May God assist you.

(Signed)

NICHOLAS

(Signature in the Tsar's own hand)

It thus appears that Russia intended to attack Japan without notice and without a declaration of war, but Alexeieff was not quick enough--G. K.

THE DEATH OF HENRY IRVING

BY ELLEN TERRY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

I have now nearly finished the history of my fifty years upon the stage.

A good deal has been left out through want of skill in selection. Some things have been included which perhaps it would have been wiser to omit. I have tried my best to tell "all things faithfully," and it is possible that I have given offence where offence was not dreamed of; that some people will think that I should not have said this, while others, approving of "this," will be quite certain that I ought not to have said "that."

"One said it thundered ... another that an angel spake----"

It's the point of view.

During my struggles with my refractory, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory memories, I have realised that life itself is a point of view. So if any one said to me: "And is this, then, what you call your life?" I should not resent the question one little bit.

"We have heard," continues my imaginary and disappointed interlocutor, "a great deal about your life in the theatre. You have told us of plays and parts and rehearsals, of actors good and bad, of critics and of playwrights, of success and failure, but after all your whole life has not been lived in the theatre. Have you nothing to tell us about your different homes, your family life, your social diversions, your friends and acquaintances? During your long life there have been great changes in manners and customs; political parties have altered; a great Queen has died; your country has been engaged in two or three serious wars. Did all these things make no impression on you? Can you tell us nothing of your life in the world?"

And I have to answer that I have lived very little in the world. After all, the life of an actress belongs to the theatre, as the life of a politician to the State.

* * * * *

The recognition of my fifty years of stage life by the public and by my profession was quite unexpected. Henry Irving said to me not long before his death in 1905 that he believed that they (the theatrical profession) "intended to celebrate our Jubilee." (If he had lived, he would have completed his fifty years on the stage in the autumn of 1906.) He said that there would be a monster performance at Drury Lane, and that already the profession were discussing what form it was to take.

After his death, I thought no more of the matter. Indeed, I did not want to think about it, for any recognition of my Jubilee which did not include his seemed to me very unnecessary.

Of course, I was pleased that others thought it necessary. I enjoyed all the celebrations. Even the speeches that I had to make did not spoil my enjoyment. The difficulty was to thank people as they deserved.

I can never forget that London's youngest newspaper first conceived the idea of celebrating my stage Jubilee. Of course, the old-established journals didn't like it, but I suppose no scheme of this kind is ever organized without some people not liking something!

The matinée given in my honour at Drury Lane by the theatrical profession was a wonderful sight. The two things about it which touched me most deeply were my visit the night before to the crowd who were waiting to get into the gallery, and the presence of Eleonora Duse, who came all the way from Florence just to honour me. I appreciated very much, too, the kindness of Signor Caruso in singing for me. I did not know him at all, and the gift of his service was essentially the impersonal desire of an artist to honour another artist.

When the details of my Jubilee performance at Drury Lane were being arranged, the committee decided to ask certain distinguished artists to contribute to the programme. They were all delighted about it, and such busy men as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Mr. Abbey, Mr. Byam Shaw, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. James Pryde, Mr. Orpen, and Mr. William Nicholson all gave some of their work to me. Mr. Sargent was asked if he would allow the first Lady Macbeth sketch to be reproduced. He found that it would not reproduce well, so in the height of the season and of his work with fashionable sitters, he did an entirely new sketch, in black and white, of the same subject! This act of kind friendship I could never forget, even if the picture were not in front of me at this minute to remind me of it! "You must think of me as one of the people bowing down to you in the picture," he wrote to me when he sent the new version for the programme. Nothing during my Jubilee celebrations touched me more than this wonderful kindness of Mr. Sargent's.

Burne-Jones would have done something for my Jubilee programme too, I think, had he lived. He was one of my kindest friends, and his letters--he was a heaven-born letter-writer--were like no one else's, full of charm and humour and feeling. Once, when I sent him a trifle for some charity, he wrote me this particularly charming letter:

"Dear Lady,

"This morning came the delightful crinkly paper that always means you! If anybody else ever used it, I think I should assault them! I certainly wouldn't read their letter or answer it.

"And I know the cheque will be very useful. If I thought much about those wretched homes, or saw them often, I should do no more work, I know. There is but one thing to do--to help with a little money if you can manage it, and then try hard to forget. Yes, I am certain that I should never paint again if I saw much of those hopeless lives that have no remedy....

"You would always have been lovely and made some beauty about you if you had been born there--but I should have got drunk and beaten my family and been altogether horrible! When everything goes just as I like, and painting prospers a bit, and the air is warm, and friends well, and everything perfectly comfortable, I can just manage to behave decently, and a spoilt fool I am--that's the truth. But wherever you were, some garden would grow.

"Yes, I know Winchelsea and Rye and Lynn and Hythe--all bonny places, and Hythe has a church it may be proud of. Under the sea is another Winchelsea, a poor drowned city--about a mile out at sea, I think, always marked in old maps as 'Winchelsea Dround.' If ever the sea goes back on that changing coast, there may be great fun when the spires and towers come up again. It's a pretty land to drive in.

"I am growing downright stupid--I can't work at all, nor think of anything. Will my wits ever come back to me?

"And when are you coming back--when will the Lyceum be in its rightful hands again? I refuse to go there till you come back...."

* * * * *

One of those little things almost too good to be true happened at the close of the Drury Lane matinée. A four-wheeler was hailed for me by the stage-door keeper, and my daughter and I drove off to Lady Bancroft's in Berkeley Square to leave some flowers. Outside the house, the cabman told my daughter that in old days he had often driven Charles Kean from the Princess Theatre, and that sometimes the little Miss Terrys were put inside the cab too and given a lift! My daughter thought it such an extraordinary coincidence that the old man should have come to the stage door of Drury Lane by a mere chance on my Jubilee day, that she took his address, and I was to send him a photograph and remuneration. But I promptly lost the address, and was never able to trace the old man.

I was often asked during these Jubilee days, "how I felt about it all," and I never could answer sensibly. The strange thing is that I don't know even now what was in my heart. Perhaps it was one of my chief joys that I had not to say good-bye at any of the celebrations. I could still speak to my profession as a fellow-comrade on the active list and to the public as one still in their service.

All the time I knew perfectly well that the great show of honour and "friending" was not for me alone. Never for one instant did I forget this, nor that the light of the great man by whose side I had worked for a quarter of a century was still shining on me from his grave.

* * * * *

It is commonly known, I think, that Henry Irving's health first began to fail in 1896.

He went home to Grafton Street after the first night of the revival of "Richard III." and slipped on the stairs, injuring his knee. With characteristic fortitude, he struggled to his feet unassisted and walked to his room. This made the consequences of the accident far more serious, and he was not able to act for weeks.

It was a bad year at the Lyceum.

In 1898, when we were on tour, he caught a chill. Inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, pneumonia followed. His heart was affected. He was never really well again.

When I think of his work during the next seven years, I could weep! Never was there a more admirable, extraordinary worker; never was any one more splendid-couraged and patient.

The seriousness of his illness in 1898 was never really known. He nearly died.

"I am still fearfully anxious about H," I wrote to my daughter at the time. "It will be a long time at the best before he gains strength.... But now I do hope for the best. I'm fairly well so far. All he wants is for me to keep my health, not my head. He knows I'm doing that! Last night I did three acts of Sans-Gêne and Nance Oldfield thrown in! That is a bit too much--awful work--and I can't risk it again.

"A telegram just came: 'Steadily improving.' ... You should have seen Norman[I] as Shylock! It was not a bare 'get-through.' It was--the first night--an admirable performance, as well as a plucky one.... H. is more seriously ill than anyone dreams.... His look! Like the last act of Louis XI."

In 1902, on the last provincial tour that we ever went together, he was ill again, but he did not give in. One night when his cough was rending him, and he could hardly stand up for weakness, he acted so brilliantly and strongly that it was easy to believe in Christian Science "treatment." Strange to say, a newspaper man noticed the splendid power of his performance that night and wrote of it with uncommon discernment--a _provincial_ critic, by the way.

In London, at the time, they were always urging Henry Irving to produce new plays by new playwrights! But in the face of the failure of most of the new work, and of his departing strength--and of the extraordinary support given him in the old plays (during this 1902 tour we took £4,000 at Glasgow in one week!)--Henry took the wiser course in doing nothing but the old plays to the end of the chapter.

I realised how near, not only the end of the chapter, but the end of the book was when he was taken ill at Wolverhampton in the spring of 1905.

We had not acted together for more than two years then, and times were changed indeed.

I went down to Wolverhampton when the news of his illness reached London. I arrived late and went to an hotel. It was not a good hotel, nor could I find a very good florist when I got up early the next day and went out with the intention of buying Henry some flowers. I wanted some bright-coloured ones for him--he had always liked bright flowers--and this florist dealt chiefly in white flowers--_funeral_ flowers.

At last I found some daffodils--my favourite flower. I bought a bunch, and the kind florist, whose heart was in the right place if his flowers were not, found me a nice simple glass to put it in. I knew the sort of vase that I should find at Henry's hotel.

I remembered, on my way to the doctor's--for I had decided to see the doctor first--that in 1892, when my dear mother died, and I did not act for a few nights, when I came back, I found my room at the Lyceum filled with daffodils. "To make it look like sunshine," Henry said.

The doctor talked to me quite frankly.

"His heart is dangerously weak," he said.

"Have you told him?" I asked.

"I had to, because, the heart being in that condition, he must be careful."

"Did he understand _really_?"

"Oh, yes. He said he quite understood."

(Yet, a few minutes later when I saw Henry, and begged him to remember what the doctor had said about his heart, he exclaimed: "Fiddle! It's not my heart at all! It's my _breath_!" Oh, the ignorance of great men!)

"I also told him," the Wolverhampton doctor went on, "that he must not work so hard in future."

I said; "He will, though,--and he's stronger than any one."

Then I went round to the hotel.

I found him sitting up in bed, drinking his coffee.

He looked like some beautiful gray tree that I have seen in Savannah. His old dressing-gown hung about his frail yet majestic figure like some mysterious gray drapery.

We were both very much moved and said little.

"I'm glad you've come. Two Queens have been kind to me this morning. Queen Alexandra telegraphed to say how sorry she was I was ill, and now you----"

He showed me the Queen's gracious message.

I told him he looked thin and ill, but _rested_.

"Rested! I should think so. I have plenty of time to rest. They tell me I shall be here eight weeks. Of course I shan't, but still--It was that rug in front of the door. I tripped over it. A commercial traveller picked me up--a kind fellow, but damn him, he wouldn't leave me afterwards--wanted to talk to me all night."

I remembered his having said this, when I was told by his servant, Walter Collinson, that on the night of his death at Bradford he stumbled over the rug when he walked into the hotel corridor.

We fell to talking about work. He said he hoped that I had a good manager ... agreed very heartily with me about Frohman, saying he was always so fair--more than fair.

"What a wonderful life you've had, haven't you?" I exclaimed, thinking of it all in a flash.

"Oh, yes," he said quietly, ... "a wonderful life--of work."

"And there's nothing better, after all, is there?"

"Nothing."

"What have you got out of it all?... You and I are 'getting on,' as they say. Do you ever think, as I do sometimes, what you have got out of life?"

"What have I got out of it?" said Henry, stroking his chin and smiling slightly. "Let me see.... Well, a good cigar, a good glass of wine--good friends--" Here he kissed my hand with courtesy. Always he was so courteous--always his actions, like this little one of kissing my hand, were so beautifully timed. They came just before the spoken words, and gave them peculiar value.

"That's not a bad summing up of it all," I said. "And the end.... How would you like that to come?"

"How would I like that to come?" He repeated my question, lightly, yet meditatively too. Then he was silent for some thirty seconds before he snapped his fingers--the action again before the words.

"Like that!"

I thought of the definition of inspiration--"A calculation quickly made." Perhaps he had never thought of the manner of his death before. Now he had an inspiration as to how it would come.

We were silent a long time, I thinking how like some splendid Doge of Venice he looked, sitting up in bed, his beautiful mobile hand stroking his chin.

I agreed, when I could speak, that to be snuffed out like a candle would save a lot of trouble.

After Henry Irving's death in October of the same year, some of his friends protested against the statement that it was the kind of death he desired--that they knew, on the contrary, that he thought sudden death inexpressibly sad.

I can only say what he told me.

I stayed with him about three hours at Wolverhampton. Before I left, I went back to see the doctor again--a very nice man, by the way, and clever. He told me that Henry ought never to play "The Bells" again, even if he acted again, which he said ought not to be.

It was clever of the doctor to see what a terrible emotional strain "The Bells" put upon Henry--how he never could play the part of Matthias "on his head," as he could Louis XI., for example.

Every time he heard the sound of the bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white--there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.

His death as Matthias--the death of a strong, robust man--was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die--he imagined death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.

No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last death as Matthias, he was dead.

What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he was obviously suffering and dazed this last night of life. But he went through it all as usual. All that he had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.

Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died in the entrance to an hotel in a country town, with no friend, no relation near him; only his faithful and devoted servant, Walter Collinson, whom--as was not his usual custom--he had asked to drive back to the hotel with him that night, was there. Do I not feel the tragedy of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls, being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy?...

I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the deathbed where friends and relations weep. Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family. England showed that she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.

Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this honour. I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked him what he expected of the public after his death: "I should like them to do their duty by me. And they will--they will!"

There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was no touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the funeral in Westminster Abbey was: "How Henry would have liked it!" The right note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson's funeral thirteen years earlier.

"Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey," I wrote in my diary October 12th, 1892. "His majestic life and death spoke of him better than the service.... The music was poor and dull and weak while he was _strong_. The triumphant should have been the sentiment expressed. Faces one knew everywhere. Lord Salisbury looked fine. His massive head and sad eyes were remarkable. No face there, however, looked anything by the side of Henry's.... He looked very pale and slim and wonderful!"

How terribly I missed that face at Henry's own funeral! I kept on expecting to see it, for indeed it seemed to me that he was directing the whole most moving and impressive ceremony.... I could almost hear him saying "Get on! get on!" in the parts of the service that dragged. When the sun, such a splendid tawny sun, burst across the solemn misty gray of the Abbey, at the very moment when the coffin, under its superb pall of laurel leaves, was carried up to the choir, I felt that it was an effect which he would have loved.

I can understand any one who was present at Henry Irving's funeral thinking that this was his best memorial, and that any attempt to honour him afterwards would be superfluous and inadequate. But after all it was Henry Irving's commanding genius and his devotion of it to high objects, his personal influence on the English people, which secured him burial among England's great dead. The petition for the burial, presented to the Dean of the Chapter, and signed on the initiative of Henry Irving's leading fellow-actors by representative personages of influence, succeeded only because of Henry's unique position.

"We worked very hard to get it done," I heard said more than once. And I often longed to answer: "Yes, you worked for it between Henry's death and his funeral. He worked for it all his life!"

I have always desired some other memorial to Henry Irving than his honoured grave; not so much for his sake as for the sake of those who loved him, and would gladly welcome the opportunity of some great test of their devotion.

THE END

[I] Mr. Norman Forbes-Robertson.

THE VALLEY OF MILLS

BY H. G. DWIGHT

WITH A PAINTING BY F. BRANGWYN

_The American Dragoman narrates to the Second Secretary_