Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers and the natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of moral strength--as compared with the Japanese--affected all ranks of our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions--a war in which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country--the same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have dogged resolution enough to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding, with unshakable tenacity, the positions assigned them, our troops often retreated, and, in such cases, our commanding officers of all ranks, without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right. Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however, never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war, together with our final acquirement of numerical preponderance and a noticeable decline of Japanese ardor, gave us reason to regard the future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate victory.

_The Failure of the Russian Fleet_

Among other reasons for the success of the Japanese, I may mention the following.

The leading part in the war was to have been taken by our fleet. In the General Staff of the navy, as well as in that of the army, a detailed account was kept of all Japan's ships of war; but the directors of naval affairs in the Far East reckoned only tonnage, guns, and calibers, and when, in 1903, they found that the arithmetical totals of our Far Eastern fleet exceeded those of the entire Japanese fleet, they adopted, as a basis for our plan of operations, the following conclusions:

1. "The relation that the strength of the Japanese fleet bears to the strength of our fleet is such that the possibility of the defeat of the latter is inadmissible."

2. "The landing of the Japanese at Yinkow, or in Korea Bay, is not to be regarded as practicable."

The strength of the land force that a war with Japan would require depended upon three things: (1) the strength of the army that the Japanese could put into Manchuria, or across our boundary; (2) the strength of our fleet; and (3) the transporting capacity of the railway upon which our troops would have to depend in concentration. If our fleet could defeat the fleet of the Japanese, military operations on the main land would be unnecessary. And even if the Japanese were not defeated in a general naval engagement, they would either have to obtain complete mastery of the sea, or leave a considerable part of their army at home for the protection of their own coast. Without command of the sea, moreover, they could not risk a landing on the Liao-tung peninsula, but would have to march through Korea, and that would give us time for concentration. By their desperate night attack upon our fleet at Port Arthur, before the declaration of war,[H] they obtained a temporary superiority in armored vessels, and made great use of it in getting command of the sea. Our fleet--especially after the death of Admiral Makaroff at the most critical moment in the execution of the Japanese plan of campaign--offered no resistance to the enemy whatever. Even when they landed in the immediate vicinity of Port Arthur, we did not make so much as an attempt to interfere with them. The results of this inaction were very damaging to our army. The Japanese, instead of finding it impossible to land troops in Korea Bay, as our naval authorities anticipated, were able to threaten us with a descent along the whole coast of the Liao-tung peninsula, beginning at Kwang-tung. Notwithstanding our weakness on land, Admiral Alexeieff thought it necessary to authorize a wide scattering of our troops, so we prepared to meet the Japanese on the Yalu, at Yinkow, and in the province of Kwang-tung. He had also permitted a dispersal of our naval forces, so that we were weak everywhere.

_Advantages Secured by Japan's Naval Victory_

Instead of making a landing in Korea only,--as was anticipated in the plan worked out at Port Arthur,--the Japanese, with their immense fleet of transports, landed three armies on the Liao-tung peninsula and a fourth in Korea. Then, leaving one army in front of Port Arthur, they pushed the other three forward toward our forces, Which were slowly concentrating on the Haicheng-Liaoyang line in southern Manchuria. Thus, having taken the initiative at sea, they obtained the same advantage on land. Their command of the sea enabled them to disregard the defence of their own coast and move against us with their entire strength. In this way--contrary to our anticipations--they were able, in the first stage of the war, to put into the field a force that was superior to ours. Command of the sea, moreover, made it possible for them to supply their armies quickly with all necessary munitions, and to transport to the field, in a few days, masses of heavy supplies, which we, with our feeble railroad, were hardly able to get in months. But command of the sea, and the almost complete inactivity of our fleet, gave them another advantage, not less important, and that was the possibility of bringing safely to their ports and arsenals quantities of commissary and military stores, weapons, horses, and cattle, which had been ordered in Europe and America. Their line of communications, furthermore, was short and secure, while we were at a distance of eight thousand versts from our base of supplies and were connected with our country only by one weak line of railway. The advantage that they had over us in this respect was immense. The slow concentration of our army, which had to be brought eight thousand versts over a single-track railroad, gave them time, after the war began, to form new bodies of troops, in considerable numbers, and send them to the front. They had time enough, also, to supply their army with innumerable machine guns, after they had observed, in the early stages of the war, the importance of machine-gun fire.

The field of military operations in Manchuria had been familiar to the Japanese ever since their war with China. Its heat, its heavy rains, its mountains and its kiaoliang, were well known to them, because they had seen them all in their own country. In the mountains, especially, they felt perfectly at home, while a mountainous environment, to our troops, was oppressive. The Japanese, moreover, in their ten years of preparation for war with us, had not only studied Manchuria, but had secured there their own agents, who were of the greatest use to their army. The Chinese, I may add, assisted the Japanese, notwithstanding the severity and even cruelty with which the latter treated them.

The Japanese had a considerable advantage over us, also, in their high-powered ammunition, their machine guns, their innumerable mountain guns, their abundant supply of explosives, and their means of attack and defence in the shape of wire, mines, and hand grenades. Their organization, equipment, and transport carts were all better adapted to the field of operations than ours were, and their bodies of sappers were more numerous than ours.

The Japanese soldiers had been so trained as to develop self-reliance and ability to take the lead, and they were credited by foreign military observers with "intelligence, initiative, and quickness," In the fighting instructions that were given them, very material changes were made after the war began. At the outset, for example, night attacks were not recommended; but they soon satisfied themselves that night attacks were profitable and they afterward made great use of them. Major von Luwitz, of the German army, in a brochure entitled "The Japanese Attack in the War in Eastern Asia in 1904-05" says that while the Japanese did not neglect any means of making attacks effective, the secret of their success lay in their determination to get close to the enemy, regardless of consequences.

_The Intellectual Superiority of the Japanese Soldier_

The non-commissioned officers in the Japanese army were much superior to ours, on account of the better education and greater intellectual development of the Japanese common people. Many of them might have discharged the duties of commissioned officers with perfect success. The defects of our soldiers--both regulars and reservists--were the defects of the population as a whole. The peasants were imperfectly developed intellectually, and they made soldiers who had the same failing. The intellectual backwardness of our soldiers was a great disadvantage to us, because war now requires far more intelligence and initiative, on the part of the individual soldier, than ever before. Our men fought heroically in compact masses, or in fairly close formation, but if deprived of their officers they were more likely to fall back than to advance. In the mass we had immense strength; but few of our soldiers were capable of fighting intelligently as individuals. In this respect the Japanese were much superior to us. Their non-commissioned officers were far better developed, intellectually, than ours, and among such officers, as well as among many of the common soldiers, whom we took as prisoners, we found diaries which showed not only good education but knowledge of what was happening and intelligent comprehension of the military problems to be solved. Many of them could draw maps skilfully, and one common soldier was able to show accurately, by means of a plan sketched in the sand, the relative positions of the Japanese forces and ours.

But the qualities that contributed most to the triumph of the Japanese were their high moral spirit, and the stubborn determination with which the struggle for success was carried on by every man in their army, from the common soldier to the commander-in-chief. In many cases, their situation was so distressing that it required extraordinary power of will on their part to stand fast or to advance. But the officers seemed to have resolution enough to call on their men for impossible efforts--not even hesitating to shoot those that fell back--and the soldiers, rallying their last physical and spiritual strength, often wrested the victory away from us. One thing is certain: if the whole Japanese army had not been inspired with an ardent patriotism; if it had not been sympathetically supported by the whole nation; and if all its officers and soldiers had not appreciated the immense importance of the struggle, even such resolution as that of the Japanese leaders would have failed to achieve such results.

[A] General Kuropatkin makes frequent use of the expression
"moral strength," or "moral character," and often employs the
English word "moral" instead of the corresponding Russian word.
He evidently intends that the adjective shall be understood in
its broadest signification, as a term covering patriotism, the
sense of duty, capacity for self-sacrifice, and all the qualities
that go to make up character as distinct from mere intellectual
ability.--G. K.

[B] Considerations of space have forced me to omit the greater
part of General Kuropatkin's detailed and somewhat technical
statement with regard to Japan's military strength and the extent
to which it was underestimated by the Russian General Staff.--G. K.

[C] According to information contained in Immanuel's work, "The
Russo-Japanese War," the Japanese lost 218,000 men in battle.

[D] General Kuropatkin uses the English words "materially" and
"morally."--G. K.

[E] _Fortnightly Review._

[F] On account of student disorders that had led to the closing of
the universities.--G. K.

[G] Medical students excepted.

[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.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY]

"OLIVIA"

DRAWN BY SIR EDWIN HENRY FOR MISS HENRY'S JUBILEE PROGRAMME]

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?

_Copyright by Window & Grove_

ELLEN TERRY AS HERMIONE IN "THE WINTER'S TALE"

THE PART PLAYED BY MISS TERRY AT HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE IN 1906]

"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.

THE HOUSE WHERE HENRY IRVING LIVED DURING THE PERIOD OF HIS LYCEUM
MANAGEMENT]

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."

THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS LAST APPEARANCE ON OCTOBER 13, 1905,
THE NIGHT OF HIS DEATH]

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."

HENRY IRVING AS MATTHIAS IN "THE BELLS"

IRVING GAVE HIS LAST PERFORMANCE OF "THE BELLS" AT BRADFORD, ON
OCTOBER 12, 1905, THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS DEATH ]

IRVING'S DEATH MASK]

"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.

IRVING'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY]

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_

I shall never forget the night I got there. The train went no farther than Nicomedia in those days, and it took so long that you nearly died of old age on the way. But when the three red lights on the tail of it dwindled into the dark, I had the queerest sense of having been dropped into another world. It was the more so because one couldn't see an earthly thing--not a star, not even the Gulf which we were to cross. I only heard the lapping of it, close by, when the rumble of the train died out of the stillness. That and the crunch of steps on the sand were all there was to hear, and an occasional word I didn't catch. The men could hardly have been more silent if our lives had depended on it. I had no idea how many of them there were, or what they looked like--much less where they were taking me. They simply hoisted a sail and put off into the night. I would have sworn, too, that there was no wind. The sail filled, however: I could see the swaying pallor of it, and hear the ripple under the bow. And as my eyes got used to the darkness, I discovered an irregular silhouette in front of us, and a floating will-o'-the-wisp of a light. The silhouette grew taller and blacker till the boat grounded under it. Then, by the light of the will-o'-the-wisp, which was a sputtering oil lantern on shore, I made out some immense cypresses. You have no idea how eerie that landing was, in a waterside cemetery that was for all the world like Böcklin's Island of Death. The men moved like shadows about their Flying Dutchman of a boat, and their lantern just brought out the ghostliness of gravestones leaning between the columns of the cypresses. And I suddenly became aware of the strangest sound. I had no idea what it was or where it came from, but it was a sort of low moaning that fairly went into your bones. It grew louder when we started on again. We climbed an invisible trail where branches slashed at us in the dark, and all kinds of sharp and sweet and queer smells came put of it in waves. And nightingales began to sing like mad around us, and off in the distance somewhere jackals were barking, and under it all that low moaning went on and on and on. And at last we came out into an open space on top of the hill, where a bonfire made a hole in the black, and a couple of naked figures stood redly out in the penumbra of it, with a ring of faces flickering around them....

I found out afterwards that the bonfire business was nothing but a wrestling match--they had them almost every night on the _meidan_--and the moaning came from the mill-wheels in the valley. But I never quite got over that first impression--that sense of walking through all kinds of things without seeing them. No sooner would I begin to feel a bit at home than something would bring me up with a jerk and remind me that I was a stranger in a strange land. I suppose it was natural enough, considering that I had only just come out then. The place was nothing but a snarl of muddy lanes and mud shanties, tossed into a filbert valley where water tumbled down to the Gulf. It was only about fifty miles away from here, but it might have been five thousand and fifty. There was none of the contrast with Europe that is always bothering you here--though perhaps it really sets things off. The people were all Turks, and their village was Asia pure and simple. That extraordinary juxtaposition of care and neglect, of the exquisite and the nauseating, which begins to strike you in Italy, and which strikes you so much more here, simply went to the top notch there. It was under your eyes--and nose--every minute. There were rugs and tiles and brasses that you couldn't keep your hands off of, in houses plastered with cow-dung. And the people used the gutters for drains, and their principal business was making attar of rose. You should have seen what gardens there were, hidden away behind mud-walls!

What struck me most, though, was a something in it all which I never could lay my finger on. It seemed incredible that a country inhabited so long should show so few signs of it. The people might have camped in a clearing over night, and the woods were just waiting to cover up their tracks. But the wildness was not the good blank, unconscious wildness we have at home. There was a melancholy about it. The silence that hung over the place was really a little uncanny. The mills only cried it out, in that monotonous minor of theirs. They were picturesque old wooden things, all green with moss and maidenhair fern, that went grinding and groaning on forever, and making you wonder what on earth it was all about. I can't say that I ever found out, either. But I certainly got grist enough for my own mill.

For that matter, I don't imagine that I was precisely an open book myself. In this part of the world they haven't got our passion for poking around where we don't belong: perhaps they've had more time to find out how little there is in it. And for a mysterious individual from lands beyond the sea, whose servant can't be prevented from bragging of the splendor in which he lives at Constantinople, to bury himself in a wild country village, must mean something queer. Does one give up a _konak_ on the Bosphorus for a _khan_ in the Marmora? And are there no teachers of Turkish in Stamboul? I believe it didn't take long for the _Moutessarif_ of Nicomedia to find out I was there, and for him to ascertain in ways best known to himself what I was up to. I have often wondered what his version of it was. At all events it didn't prevent the great men of the village from smoking cigarettes of peace with me in a little vine-shaded coffee-house at the top of the hill. There was the _Mudir_, a plump and harmless _effendi_ of a governor; and the _Naïb_, who was some kind of country justice; and a charming old _Imam_ in a green turban and a white beard and a rose-colored robe; and a _Tchaouche_, an officer of police, all done up in yellow braid and brass whistles; and various other personages. And I couldn't imagine where in the world they had all picked up their courtliness and conversation. The _Mudir_ was from town, and one or two of the others had been there; but if such things were to be had for a visit to town they'd be a little more common at home. Of course, I was asked a good many questions, and some of them were pretty personal. That is a part of Oriental etiquette, you will find. It was marvelous, though, what a _savoir faire_ they had, to say nothing of a sense of life and a few other things. I couldn't make them out--taken with their vile village and their half-tamed fields. The thing used to bother me half to death, too. I thought all I had to do was to sit down and look pleasant and turn them inside out at my leisure. Whereas more than once I had a vague feeling, after it was over, of having been turned inside out myself. Altogether it makes me grin when I remember what an idiotic young ostrich I was. I have been at the business quite a while now, and to this day I am never sure of my man--how that Asiatic head of his will work in any given case. I can only console myself by remembering that I'm not the only one. In the last two generations I presume there must have been as many as four Anglo-Saxons--and three of those, Englishmen--who didn't more or less make jackasses of themselves when they ran up against Asia. And I fancy it took them rather more than a year to arrive at even that negative degree of comprehension.

However, various things went into my hopper first and last, to the tune of the mill-wheels in the valley--particularly last.... It was lucky for me that the wireless telegraphy I sometimes felt about me allowed the _Mudir_ to cultivate his natural inclinations. He was bored enough in his exile, and I think he was genuinely glad that his advices from headquarters made him free of my company. I certainly am. I have never come into just such relations with any of the officials here. He was a grave, mild, suave personage who might have made an excellent _Cadi_ of tradition if he had never heard of Paris. As it was, I'm afraid he took less thought for his peasants' troubles than of the extent to which they could be made to repay him for his own. He liked to practise his French on me as much as I liked to practise my Turkish on him, and on such occasions as I had the honor of squatting at his little round board, his knowledge of the Occident would manifest itself in an incredible profusion of spoons. I also discovered that he was by no means averse to sampling my modest cellar. He didn't care so much about being found out, though. They are tremendous prohibitionists, you know, and while the pashas have accepted champagne with their tight trousers, they're not so public about it. Just watch when you go to your first court dinner.

A person of whom I thought more than the _Mudir_, and who interested me more as a type, was the _Imam_. A more kindly, honest, simple, delightful old man it has seldom been my luck to meet. He was a Turk of the old school, without an atom of Europe in his composition. I wish they were not getting so confoundedly rare. They are worth a million times more than these Johnnies who pick up the Roman alphabet and a few half-baked ideas about what we are pleased to call progress. I took daily lessons from him. He was a mighty theologian--made me read the Koran, and all that, and was much interested in what I had to tell him of our own beliefs. He used to make me ashamed of knowing so little about them. Before he got through with me, he taught me rather more than was in the bond, I fancy. I had always cherished a notion that because a Turk could have four wives, and didn't think much of my chances for the world to come, and was somewhat free in the use of antidotes to human life, his morality wasn't worth talking about. But I got something of an eye-opener on that point.

Altogether, I managed to have a very decent time of it. My pill of learning the most of the language in the least possible time was so ingeniously sugared that the business was one prolonged picnic. In fact, living in a _khan_, as I did at first, is nothing but camping. They're all about the same, you know. You can see the model any day over in Stamboul--a rambling stack of galleries round a court of cattle and wheels, and big bare rooms where twenty people could live. They often do, too. You spread your own bedding on the wooden divan surrounding two or three sides of the room, and your servant cooks for you in a series of little charcoal pits under the huge chimney. It's rather amusing for a while, if you're not too fussy about smells and crawling things. I suppose I must have been, for the _Mudir_ eventually persuaded me to rent a house from an absentee rose-growing pasha. It was about the only wooden one in the place--a huge rattlety-bang old affair that stood on the edge of the bluff, a little apart from the town. It leaked so villainously that I had to sit under an umbrella every time there was a shower, but the view and the garden made up for it. I used to prowl around the country a good deal, though. Everything was so strange to me--the faces, the costumes, the curious implements, the hairy black buffaloes, the fat-tailed sheep with their dabs of red dye, the solid-wheeled carts that lamented more loudly, if less continuously, than the water-wheels, the piratish-looking caravels strutting up and down the Gulf under a balloon of a mainsail. I took them by the day, sometimes, to go fishing or exploring. All of which must have been highly incomprehensible to my astonished neighbors. I believe my man had to invent some legend of a doctor and a cure to account for so eccentric a master. It was only when I came more and more to spend my days among the cypresses on the edge of the beach that I became less an object of suspicion; for while a Turk is little of a sportsman and less of mere aimless sight-seer, he likes nothing better than sitting philosophically under the greenwood tree.

My greenwood was, as I have said, a cemetery. Heaven knows how long it had been there. The cypresses were enormously tall and thick and dark. And the stones under them--with their carved turbans and arabesques, and their holes and rain-hollows for restless or thirsty ghosts--were all gray and lichened with time, and pitched every which way between the coiling roots. You may think it a queer kind of place to sit around in, but it took my fancy enormously. I don't know--there was something so still and old about it, and the spring had such a look between the black trees. It wasn't quite still, either, for that strange, low minor of the water-wheels was always in your ears. It ran on and on, like the sound of the quiet and the sunshine and the cypresses and the ancient stones. And it made all sorts of things go through your head. I presume that first impression had something to do with it. You wondered whether the trees would have lived so long if so many dead people had not lain among their roots. You wondered--I don't know what you didn't wonder.