Chapter VI: Part 6

And yet, despite this full revelation of the man’s nature, who can fail to be moved by the splendid despair of his closing hours, when, with all the forces of heaven and earth arrayed against him, he struggles with dauntless courage to the end? His imagination, still informing his shattered spirit, lights up the ruin of his life, and presents to his wearied gaze the hated object that he has become in the sight of all men:

My way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

There is no refuge of madness for him. He has seen the end from the beginning, and even when the end has come it has no terror which he had not known long ago. This only is added to his earlier knowledge, though the truth, alas! comes too late, that this present life, which he had held so dear, and for which he had sacrificed all, this life, which had been the tomb of his virtue, and of his honour, is

... but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

And so, with the “sound and fury” of this present world still ringing in his ears, he passes out into that “life to come” of which he had never dreamed at all.

HENRY IRVING

The value of personality on the stage has rarely been exhibited with greater force than in the case of Sir Henry Irving. Nature had not specially equipped him for his calling; in several respects, indeed, she had weighted him with disabilities which were destined to prove a serious hindrance in the progress of his career. But she had dowered him, as if by way of compensation, with a force and persistence of character that finally shaped for themselves a mode of expression which satisfied the demands of his ambition. And this sense of resident power was mirrored in the man himself, even in the earlier days when those physical peculiarities, which he never wholly lost, were, for the time, gravely imperilling his success upon the stage.

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.

Indeed among the men who practised this branch of art, I have known only two who in personal intercourse gave any complete indication of the humorous powers they possessed. Perhaps neither Phil May nor Fred Barnard have yet received their full meed of praise, and yet in them, rather than in their better known contemporaries, the tradition of the earlier humorists survives. In one sense they may be said to have shared between them the mantle of John Leech, and they possessed this quality in common, that their perception of the sources of laughter in life was as clearly betrayed in personal association as in the work that came from their hand. Phil May’s face was in itself a highly-coloured print that made an instant appeal to any one endowed even with a most rudimentary sense of humour, and his talk, though it affected no brilliancy, very clearly revealed the fact that the little pageant of life which came within the range of his vision struck itself at once into humorous outline. He hardly saw life, indeed, in any other frame, and the few finely selected lines with which he registered the images that presented themselves to his imagination seemed by instinctive preference to exclude and to dismiss those graver realities that were not his especial concern. And yet so keen and so sure was his touch of life that now and again his hand would outrun his purpose, and leave, even upon the slightest drawing, a suggestion of almost tragic import underlying its laughing message. Fred Barnard was a humorist through and through--at work or at play his eye lighted unerringly on whatever might enrich his humorous experience, and he was quick to detect, though never with any lack of urbanity, the little foibles of those with whom he was brought into contact.

But I suppose it is to the stage that one’s thoughts must naturally turn for the most telling exposition of this particular quality. Nearly all the comedians I have known have seemed to accept it as a part of the duty which their profession imposes on them, that they should be as amusing in the world as in the theatre. It cannot be said, according to my own experience, that they have always been successful, and I may even go so far as to say that the laboured efforts of the wilfully comic man mark off in remembrance some of the dullest hours I have passed. The penalty of the perpetual jester very often, as one would think, a grievous burden to himself, falls sometimes with even heavier incidence upon those he has doomed to be amused.

I know it is a prevalent belief among Americans that we English are wholly devoid of that sense of humour in which many of their own countrymen undoubtedly excel; and it may perhaps, therefore, shock them to learn that, to a taste differently educated, the unremitting efforts of some of their professional jesters are apt on occasion to appear a little overstrained. But in some natures the appetite for the ceaseless flow of comic anecdote is swiftly satisfied, and the man who will insist upon unpacking his wallet of well-worn stories for the intended delight of his fellows may, if he is not watchful of the effect he is producing, induce in the mind of his audience a mood of settled sadness, that not even the genius of a Dickens could lift or lighten.

This haunting fear lest conversation should at any point take a serious note--which I cannot help thinking characteristic of many Americans--is often to be found in our own country in the person of the comedian by profession. It existed perhaps in a lesser degree in J. L. Toole than any other representative of his calling whom I have intimately known. What rendered Toole delightful in companionship was rarely anything memorable that he said, for he made no effort to pose as a wit, and his reminiscent humour, which he could always summon at need, was for the most part introduced in illustration of some point of character humorously perceived and presented. There are critics who have questioned his appeal as a comedian in the theatre, but no one brought into personal contact with him could be left in any doubt as to the swiftness and sureness of his vision in detecting and enjoying the little foibles of those around him. In any company, whatever its composition, his mind got quickly to work upon each individuality in the group; and, although he might not join largely in the conversation, he loved to impart to the companion by his side his keen sense of enjoyment of the conflict and interplay of character as it presented itself at the table.

Toole was a constant guest at those pleasant little suppers in the Beefsteak Room of the Lyceum Theatre over which Irving so gracefully presided; and if one had the good fortune to be his neighbour it was always delightful to watch the expression of his swiftly-glancing, laughing eyes and mobile mouth, as they mirrored, in hardly-restrained amusement, his inward enjoyment of the changing humours of the scene. Nothing characteristic escaped him, however widely divergent the personalities that came within the range of his vision; but his quickness of perception, ever ready to register and record the little foibles of each member of the company, bred in him no feeling of resentment, but seemed rather to add to the rich store of enjoyment which, in his happier moods, life always afforded him. I say in his happier moods, because even in the earlier days of our friendship, when his vitality was unimpaired, his exuberant high spirits were subject to sudden clouds of deep depression that seemed for the time to banish all laughter from his life.

Like Irving, he was an inveterately late sitter, and the many occasions that found them together--either at the theatre or at the Garrick Club--rarely witnessed their parting till the morning hours were far spent. In Toole’s case, I know, this reluctance to break in upon the long duration of these social hours sprang in part out of a haunting terror of the sadder thoughts that might overtake him when he was driven back upon himself. He would often confess to me, as we drove home, his constant dread of these night fears, that were chiefly dominated at that time by the recurring image of his only son, whose early death remained with him to the end as an ineffaceable source of sorrow. And yet, while we talked of these sadder things, it was sometimes irresistibly comic to notice, as we drew towards his house, how this deeper grief would then be exchanged for a terror of a nearer kind, for he was always at these moments very conscious that his persistently late habits--so often repented of, but never reformed--would surely draw down upon him severe domestic rebuke. And even when the cab had reached his door, he would hold me prisoner in whispered converse in order to postpone, as long as he could, the dread moment when he would have to face the salutary lecture that was in store for him.

But for the most part he was the gayest and most light-hearted of companions, forcing out of the most unhopeful material a rich yield of fun and frolic. At home or abroad he was never at a loss for the means of filling an empty day. Sometimes, in his ceaseless tendency towards practical joking, he would place himself in positions that other men might have found embarrassing and even dangerous. But there was something so infectious in his humour, and in his good humour, that even on the Continent, where he could speak no language but his own, he was always able to extricate himself with success from difficulties that would have left many graver men without resource.

He dearly loved the excitement of the gaming table, whether at Monte Carlo or elsewhere; and I remember, during a holiday that we passed together at Aix-les-Bains, that he did his best to imperil the good effects of his cure by his constant attendance at the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. It was difficult to drag him from the table, however late the hour, for his pathetic reply to every remonstrance took the form of a solemn promise that he would absolutely go to bed as soon as the little pile before him was exhausted; a reply, the humour of which he was himself only half-conscious, for it pointed to the inevitable loss that was the final result of all his gambling transactions. After a night wherein he had been more than usually successful in exhausting the ready cash he carried about him, we made our way in the morning to the little bank in the main street of Aix-les-Bains, in order that he might make a fresh draft upon his letter of credit.

But he did not at once reveal to the clerk in charge his serious intent. Tapping lightly at the closed window of the _guichet_, he inquired, in broken English, which he appeared strangely to believe would be somehow comprehensible to his foreign interlocutor, whether the bank would be prepared to make him a small advance upon a gold-headed cane which he carried in his hand. The request, as might be supposed, was somewhat briskly dismissed, and the little window was abruptly closed in his face. Toole retired apparently deeply dejected by the refusal of his prayer; but in a few minutes he returned to the attack, having in the meantime provided himself with fresh material for a new financial proposition. Hastening out into the little market that lay near the bank, he hurriedly purchased from one of the fish-stalls a small pike that had been caught in the lake, and, having added to this a bunch of carrots, he returned to the bank, where he carefully arranged these proffered securities on the counter, enforced by the addition of his watch and chain, a three-penny bit, and a penknife. When all was ready he again tapped softly at the window, and, in a voice that was broken by sobs, implored the clerk, in view of his unfortunate position, to accept these ill-assorted articles in pledge for the small sum which was needed to save him from starvation. The clerk, by this time grown indignant, requested him to leave the establishment, explaining to him in emphatic terms, and in such English as he could command, that they only made advances upon circular notes or letters of credit. At the last-named word Toole’s saddened face suddenly broke into smiles, and, producing his letter of credit, he handed it to the astonished clerk, with the added explanation that he would have offered that at first if he had thought the bank cared about it, but that the porter at the hotel had told him the bankers of Aix liked fish better.

This is only a sample of the kind of adventure that Toole loved to create for himself and which he carried through with the keenest zest and enjoyment. His invention in such matters never flagged, and I have often been his companion through the whole of an idle day, during which he would keep us both fully employed in the prosecution of these boyish frolics, that may seem foolish enough in narration, but were irresistible in their appeal, owing to the unalloyed pleasure they brought him in their progress. I have known many men who deem themselves adepts at this kind of sport, but none who were so convincing in their methods--none, certainly, who took such an honest pleasure in their work, or who used such infinite pains in carrying the projected little plot to a successful issue.

Once at Ramsgate he contrived to relieve the tedium of a Sunday afternoon by calling at nearly every house in a long and respectable terrace, charged with a mission that was foredoomed to failure. As each door was opened Toole stood on the step, his face distorted by signs of emotion, that for the moment deprived him of all powers of speech, and when at last, in response to the angry inquiry of a maid-servant, he contrived to regain a measure of self-control, it was only to beg, in tearful accents, for the loan of “a small piece of groundsel for a sick bird.” As door after door was slammed in his face, his high spirits correspondingly increased, his only fear being, as he afterwards explained to me, lest some one of the peaceful inhabitants whose Sabbath repose he had so ruthlessly disturbed should, by an evil chance, have possessed the remedy he so persistently sought.

SITTING AT A PLAY

The child’s love of the drama begins long before there is any thought of a playhouse. To escape from life in order to rediscover it in mimic form, would seem to rank among the earliest of human impulses. We are all born actors, though some of us--and this is true even of those who adopt the stage as a profession--would seem occasionally to part with this primitive instinct in later life. But an average child has no sooner entered this world than he finds himself pursued by the longing to create another: he has scarcely had time to recognise his own identity before he seeks to hide it beneath the mask of an alien personality. How far the youthful histrion believes himself to be a lion when he crawls across the drawing-room carpet on all fours, and roars from behind the sofa, is perhaps open to argument. My own belief is that he is already so much of an artist as to be in no way deceived, but of his desire to impose upon the credulity of others there can, I think, be no question. But the limits of histrionic enjoyment are even here sometimes overstepped, as, for example, when a maturer rival in the art, boasting a louder roar, approaches too closely to the confines of absolute illusion. The enjoyment of the art as an art is then rudely disturbed, and, shaken with sudden terror, the infant Roscius is once more driven back upon that actual world from which it had been his pride and desire to escape.

This may be cited as an early instance of the intemperate employment of the resources of realism, which in later life, when sitting at a play, we have so often just reason to deplore. Again, the sudden assumption by a too eager elder of a woolly hearth-rug may ruin at a stroke the child’s purely imaginative vision that he is in the society of a bear. Natural terror expels in an instant that higher emotion which the drama is designed to create. The child recognises that the irrefutable laws of the art have been rudely broken, to his own discomfort; and it is always interesting to note on such occasions with what quick and easy resource he will suddenly change the whole subject and scope of the mimic performance, imperiously demanding that the bear shall be exchanged for a horse, or some other domestic animal, whose milder tendencies may be the more readily endured, even when the actor is forgetful of the proper restraints of his art.

It is what survives of the child in us that makes us all playgoers, although in the early days of our playgoing the unsuspected resources of illusion which the theatre can command are often hard to endure. It is, I suppose, the experience of most children--it certainly was mine--that certain critical moments in drama, clearly foreseen and eagerly anticipated, nevertheless prove in realisation too thrilling and too intense for pure delight; and I can recall occasions, such desired moments being clearly in view, when I would address a whispered request to one of my elders that I might be permitted to watch the ensuing scene from the safe vantage ground of the corridor at the back of the dress circle. The small glass window in the red baize door provided just that added veil of distance which rendered the sufferings of the persons on the stage artistically tolerable. But the crisis once past--a crisis generally signalised by the explosion of a pistol--I was eager to return to my seat in order to appreciate with unabated enjoyment the consequences of an act of violence I had not had the courage to witness.

It is remarkable how little, in those very early days of playgoing, we are at all concerned with the personality of the actor. The story is all-absorbing, and in the poignant interest in the persons of the story, all memory of the performer as a separate entity is submerged and effaced. I had no thought at that time whether the actor was good or bad. His performance appeared to me to be inevitable and inevitably perfect. The day when he takes separate existence, apart from the character he is presenting, marks a revolution in the life of the playgoer, a revolution that is destined henceforward to complicate his emotions, with never again any possible return to that earlier and more confiding attitude when the illusion of the scene is absolute and complete. It is difficult even to recall the names of the actors who first greatly stirred me. They hardly stain my memory, for in my mind they had no separate existence. But with this revolution is born a new kind of enjoyment, that carries richer recollections. The limitless world of illusion shrinks to a narrower kingdom, but its triumphs are more vivid and more enduring: the sense of assumption and disguise is no longer so complete or so convincing, but the message of revelation, when it comes, brings with it a higher pleasure.

Nothing lives longer in remembrance, or pictures itself more vividly, than the first impression of the performance of a great actor. Phelps was the earliest of my heroes of this more sophisticated time, and the first of his performances I can recall was that of Falstaff in _King Henry IV._ produced at Drury Lane. Walter Montgomery was the Hotspur of the occasion, and young Edmund Phelps figured as Prince Hal. First impressions are hard to supplant, and the visual presentment of Falstaff even now always takes the form and shape assigned to him by the elder Phelps on that memorable evening. I saw him many times afterwards--in _Othello_ and _King John_, in Mephistopheles, in Bayle Bernard’s version of Goethe’s play, in Wolsey, in Sir Pertinax M‘Sycophant, and in John Bull; and, although the more critical spirit of a later hour left him shorn of some part of that perfection I thought was his when I first saw him upon the stage, he ranks even now in my recollection as a great and gifted exponent of a great tradition. In his personality there was little to allure. It was rugged and bereft of many of the lighter graces that are calculated to win an audience; but his voice was incomparable, and the earnestness of the artist beyond reproach. Nor could variety of resource be denied him: he seemed equally equipped for his task as King John, Wolsey, or Falstaff, or as Bottom in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. He fought his way to a front rank in the profession at a time when older playgoers were full of memories of men who were perhaps his superiors--of Kemble, Kean, and, more recently, of Macready. But whatever he owed to any of them--and I do not suppose he was ever tempted to deny his debt--it is impossible not to concede to him a rare measure of individual power that must always leave him his due rank among the English interpreters of Shakespeare.

It must have been my first vision of Charles Fechter which enabled me to realise as by a flash how much Phelps suffered by lack of personal charm and grace. In those days I had not seen Fechter in Shakespeare. I knew him only as the victorious lover and the conquering hero of romantic drama. But, however conventional the material upon which his talent was employed, the glamour of his personality exercised an overpowering fascination.

To the youth of both sexes Fechter’s foreign accent constituted a charm in itself. The rising cadence of his voice struck heroically on the ear, and the swifter and freer gesture which came of his Gallic origin added something of extra fascination to the unquestionably great gifts with which he was endowed. In those days of the old Lyceum, when he was acting in melodramas like _The Duke’s Motto_ and _Bel Demonio_, Miss Kate Terry was constantly his partner and the two together seemed to embody for the time the whole spirit of romance. But the moment of Fechter’s acting which is stamped most firmly in my recollection was in the last act of _Ruy Blas_. It was not till long afterwards when growing stoutness had robbed him of that grace of form which belonged to his earlier days, that I saw him in the part of _Hamlet_, and it is perhaps hardly fair to test his fitness as a Shakespearean actor by such later impressions. To me, however, that foreign cadence, which linked itself so well with the impersonation of romantic heroism, left a jarring note when it was yoked with the statelier measure of English verse; and it was not till long afterwards, when I saw Irving’s _Hamlet_, that I realised for the first time how much of the subtlety of the character and beauty of the play could be realised within the walls of a theatre.

The playgoer’s memories refuse to obey any strict chronological order. They are rather governed by vividness of impression, which summons with equal distinctness things seen long ago and triumphs of a more recent date. My first vision of Sarah Bernhardt retains always a foremost place in my playgoing experience. It was in Paris in the spring of 1876, and the play was _L’Étrangère_. She was surrounded by a company of rare distinction--Coquelin, Croisette, and Mounet-Sully amongst them. But I remember, as she came upon the stage, that a creature almost of another race seemed suddenly to have invaded, and, at a single stroke, to be dominating, the scene. Her personality appeared at once to announce a new dialect in the language of Art. Her mode of speech and her method of acting left almost unregarded and unremembered the particular language in which the play was written. In virtue of her genius she became at once an international possession, leaving, by comparison, the artists around her almost provincial in style and method. I had previously seen Ristori, and had marvelled at the wonders of her art in Lucrezia Borgia and in Mary Stuart, an art that was struck in a larger mould than Sarah Bernhardt could claim; and I afterwards had to acknowledge the superb force and matchless physical resource which Salvini brought to the theatre. But in neither case does the first impression stand out so vividly in recollection as that first impression of Sarah Bernhardt in Dumas’ play. And yet I remember Sir Frederick Leighton, whose recollections of the theatre went back to an earlier day, telling me that the effect produced by Rachel left Sarah Bernhardt’s art by comparison almost in the region of the commonplace.

I have mentioned the name of Coquelin, whose talent in the region of comedy was consummate, and even in this very performance of _L’Étrangère_ his impersonation of the Duc de Septmonts leaves an ineffaceable recollection. But I had already seen him in Molière, and it was the endless resource with which he furnished the creations of the master dramatist of France that gives him, I think, his unapproachable place in the modern theatre. His own rich enjoyment of every discovered detail of the carefully constructed portrait carried with it the magic of infection, and, as the work grew under his hand, the spectator was left with a pitiful consciousness of his own dulness in having gathered from the written page so small a part of the author’s manifest intention. In so far as the actor’s art seeks for the triumphs of assumption and disguise, Coquelin was, indeed, beyond the reach of rivalry, and it was perhaps pardonable, in view of his own splendid achievement, that he should have been disposed to question the claims of those whose mastery in this particular direction was not so complete as his own. Coquelin to the last was intolerant of all acting which allowed the personality of the performer to override the identity of the particular character to be presented. He could be admiring, and even enthusiastic, over the art of Irving, but always with an implied reservation--the English actor never, to his thinking, sufficiently effaced himself in his part; the performance, however brilliant in intellectual force, was marred, in Coquelin’s judgment, by an imperfect surrender of personality, and by a corresponding incompleteness of assumption. And that was an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the French artist.

It was agreeable to discuss these matters with Coquelin, for he was a brilliant talker, quick in insight, and ever ready with the terse and fit phrase to illustrate his meaning. And it was peculiarly interesting to me, because the argument touched upon problems in the actor’s art that I have always thought to be profoundly significant. How far may the personality of the performer intrude itself in the presentation of the chosen character, and to what extent are assumption and disguise part of the indispensable equipment of the artist? These are questions which every generation is apt to raise in regard to its popular favourites upon the stage. And the answer is not easy to find. To very many it will seem indisputable that versatility carries with it the hall-mark of perfection, and that no actor can claim absolute victory in any individual achievement unless we are allowed completely to forget the person in the impersonation. Such critics are the avowed champions of the art of disguise, and yet, to me at least, they leave out of account the most profound and most memorable impressions which the theatre is able to yield. The scenes which have most deeply moved me, the performers whose art has stirred me to the strongest emotion, are hardly associated in memory with any particular triumph of characterisation. It is, in short, not disguise, but revelation, which evokes and demands the highest histrionic gifts. The ingenuity and resource that can distinguish and exhibit the markings of varying personality must, of course, always count for much, but the imaginative power which can recreate upon the scene the simpler and deeper emotions that are common to us all must surely count for more; and in the exercise of this higher power the lighter accessories employed to achieve completeness of disguise must often be discarded and forgotten, as the actor’s personality, impatient of all lesser fetters that impede its utterance, becomes wholly engaged in the task of communicating to his audience the deeper and more enduring passions of our common humanity.