Chapter XVIII: Some Foreign Actors

As I have said in a previous chapter, H. J. Montague, at the time that I first became a theatre-goer, was the accepted _jeune premier_ of the time. He certainly had no rival among his own countrymen as the exponent of lovers’ parts in modern comedy.

But there was a foreigner who had preceded him, whose art had a wider compass, and whose powers as a creator of the heroes of romance knew no rivalry. In such achievements Charles Fechter had a conquering gift that laid all lady worshippers at his feet. It was only at a later time that I saw him in Shakespeare, and then only in _Hamlet_. He was aged and had grown stout, and it is perhaps scarcely fair to speak of his abilities as a Shakespearian actor upon the imperfect evidence that was offered to me; but I thought even then that he treated the tragedy too exclusively from the point of view of a love story, reducing its higher imaginative message by too great a regard for Hamlet’s relations with Ophelia. But that very tendency which seemed to me a fault in his Hamlet was part of a gift that left him unapproachable in rôles that were purely romantic.

I saw him first in _The Duke’s Motto_ at the Lyceum, and then in _Bel Demonio_, and again in _Ruy Blas_; and in all those performances, as I recall them, his fascination seemed irresistible. I can almost hear now the tones of his voice, defiant and triumphant, with that rich rising cadence which betrayed his foreign origin, as he came down the steps with Kate Terry in his arms in the former most tawdry of romantic plays. The impersonation of Ruy Blas cut deeper, as the play itself was more finely conceived. But, indeed, the effect he produced was hardly dependent upon the play. It rested rather upon something innately heroic in himself, something that left the spectator with a feeling of security from the first note struck by the actor, that the issue, however grave, and however perilous its intermediate passages, must leave him undefeated at the last. The last time I saw him was in _Monte Christo_, a drama with some strong scenes, but, on the whole, poorly constructed and unduly prolonged; and I remember, as I sat in the pit, that when midnight came and the end seemed still afar off, a cheery voice from the gallery cried out, “Good-night, Mr. Fechter, I shall be here again on Monday.”

The sort of play in which Fechter scored his greatest success has long fallen out of fashion, but I cannot help thinking that if the actor were here to-day who could boast gifts equal to his, a play fitted to form a vehicle for the exercise of his powers would be quickly forthcoming.

Fechter’s name naturally recalls other foreign actors and actresses who have visited our shores during the last thirty years. The greatest of them all, to my thinking, and I am not unmindful of the name of Salvini, was Madame Ristori. She had not, perhaps, the sudden power born of sudden impulse which Madame Bernhardt could boast, a power in which, I suppose, Madame Rachel was far superior to both. Indeed, I remember having a talk with Sir Frederick Leighton, who in his student days in Paris had known Rachel’s acting well, and he assured me that Rachel stood as far above Sarah Bernhardt as Sarah Bernhardt stood above all other actresses of her time.

But Ristori’s art, though it may have missed the occasional lightning flashes, was sustained throughout at a commandingly high level, sustained by a sense of style that gave continuous dignity and grace to all she did. Her Lucrezia Borgia rests with me as one of the most beautiful and at the same time most agonising performances I have ever seen upon the stage; and scarcely less memorable was her Marie Stuart.

It was during one of her later engagements in London that she conceived the ambition of playing the sleep-walking scene from _Macbeth_ in the English language, and she asked me, with one or two other critics, to come to her house in order that we might correct any errors of pronunciation which her performance might betray. It was in a little drawing-room somewhere down in South Belgravia that we sat and listened to her as, in her ordinary every-day garb, she acted the scene; and I do not think there was one of us who was not so entirely absorbed in the beauty and power of the impersonation as not completely to forget the special mission upon which we had been summoned. It was only afterwards--when, recalling us to our task, she sat in our midst and quietly read the words over again--that we discovered she blundered in one particular, and in one particular only. When she came to the line, “Not all the perfumes of Arabia,” it seemed impossible for her tongue, “hung,” as Sala used to say of his own, “in a southern belfry,” not to give an absolutely equal emphasis to each separate syllable of the final word. There was no other fault to find, and when afterwards, encouraged by our praise, she gave the performance in the theatre, its effect was deeply impressive.

A little later, on my recommendation, she read, in English, Webster’s tragedy of _The Duchess of Malfi_, and at the time she was so keenly impressed with the beauty of the character, as set in its lurid frame, that she entertained the project of having a version of the play made for her in Italian.

As I walked away from her house that day with John Oxenford, he was recalling to me some of his earlier experiences as dramatic critic of the _Times_. In those later days he had allowed himself to become little more than a good-natured chronicler of the narrative underlying each play as it was presented, and rarely elected to be critical or censorious, whether of the qualities of the dramatist and still less of the manner in which the actors acquitted themselves. In the discharge of this function, however, he had no equal. There was no one on the Press at that time who could, with such grace or in so narrow a compass, set forth the story of the plot of the drama under consideration. But some of us, who brought to our work the greater keenness of youth, were disposed to reproach him with the unvarying good-nature which governed his appreciation of the art of the time.

Some such feeling I must have expressed to him as we sauntered along, for he told me, by way of rejoinder, that he had very early learnt his lesson not to endeavour to intrude his own opinions into the columns of the _Times_. Near the beginning of his career, he had indulged in some unfavourable comment upon the performance of the orchestra, which provoked an angry letter of remonstrance from the player of the trombone--a letter of remonstrance that in its turn called down a sharp rebuke upon the critic from the great editor, Mr. Delane.

“I wish it to be understood,” he curtly intimated to Oxenford, “that the _Times_ has no desire to be embroiled in controversy with trombone players.”

And Oxenford assured me that he had since acted upon this clear note of warning, and had accordingly avoided as much as possible any kind of criticism that might invite a retort from the injured player, though he had on one occasion, as he confessed, indulged in an epigram that might, he feared, have injured his position. It was of some young actor, whose performance seemed to him more than usually incompetent, that he ventured the remark: “We are told that Mr. So-and-so is a promising performer. For our own part we can only say that we care not how often he promises so long as he never again performs.”

But this was an isolated instance in the powers of sarcasm which he undoubtedly possessed, and for the most part he continued to the end of his career in a spirit of unruffled urbanity.

The visit of the French players during the Franco-German War stirred London not a little, and undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence upon the younger representatives of dramatic art in England.

Delaunay and Got were in their separate ways perfect masters of that restrained and balanced art which is the outcome of the French system of training, exhibited in its perfect form in the French National Theatre. And the restraint and modesty of their methods strongly appealed to that younger school of actors in England who were already striving after a greater naturalness of interpretation. But their appeal was made for the most part in the region of comedy, and it was the advent of Salvini, with his larger and more passionate individuality, that gave a new impulse to the rendering of tragic character.

Salvini was beyond question a superb performer. His natural equipment for an actor, as exhibited in a voice of unexampled power and charm, was in itself more than sufficient to warrant the extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm which greeted his appearance in London. And yet, for all his undeniable power, his actual rendering of the character of Othello never seemed to me to be in perfect keeping with the spirit and intention of the author.

Overmastering in his strength and superb in his rendering of the more passionate passages of the play, he missed, as I felt at the time, and as I still feel, the tragic sublimity that marks the closing scenes of the drama.

I shall not easily forget my first vision of Sarah Bernhardt in Dumas’ play of _L’Étrangère_, in which she was associated with Coquelin, Monnet, Sully, and Croizette. She seemed, even beside such accomplished players as these, to be a creature of a separate race, endowed with a force and intensity of feeling that made those around her appear to be moving in a lower world.

It was, however, only when she came to London that I got to know her personally, and after I had produced my play of _King Arthur_ at the Lyceum Theatre, she was so strongly attracted by the subject that she had a French version of the drama prepared, wherein she intended herself to impersonate the character of Lancelot. But, like so many other projects which Madame Bernhardt has from time to time entertained, the favourable opportunity for such a performance passed by, and the idea was replaced by other and more pressing demands upon her brilliant career.

When she was in London she was a constant guest at Irving’s little suppers at the Lyceum, where she evinced the warmest admiration for the genius of Miss Ellen Terry. One evening, when Miss Terry was protesting that she was no longer young enough to undertake some rôle that Irving was pressing her to interpret, Sarah leant across the table and said, “My dearling, there are two peoples who shall never be old--you and me.” And, indeed, it may be allowed that in both cases the boast has won some warrant from nature. The youth of Miss Terry seems to be an indestructible gift. It is born again with each day of her existence, and as an essential quality of her nature has suffered no change and has known no deterioration from the early days when, after a brief period of absence, she returned to the stage as the heroine of Charles Reade’s drama, _The Wandering Heir_.

I think Sarah Bernhardt was always at her best when Miss Terry was one of her audience, and I recollect one occasion in particular, when, in company with Miss Terry, I witnessed a performance of the _Dame aux Camelias_ which in sincerity and power far surpassed any of the many representations of the character which I had seen Madame Bernhardt previously deliver.

It was a particularly interesting evening, for it happened that only a few nights before Miss Terry and I had also together seen Madame Duse play the same part in the same theatre. Here again, I think, the Italian actress was finely inspired by the presence of her comrade, for she too had on that evening surpassed herself.

The contrast between the two performers was striking and complete, and would go far to prove how inexhaustible are the resources of the actor’s art, and how varied the influences of each separate personality, even when they are employed upon the same material.