by Bram Stoker
When the floodgates of Comment are opened there comes with the rush of clean water all the scum and rubbish which has accumulated behind them drawn into position by the trickling stream.
CHAPTER II
THE OLD SCHOOL AND THE NEW
Irving’s Early Experience in Dublin — A Month of Hisses — The Old School of Acting and the New — Historical Comparison — From Edmund Kean to Irving — Irving’s Work — The Thoughtful School
I
MORE than five years elapsed before I saw Henry Irving again. We were both busy men, each in his own way, and the Fates did not allow our orbits to cross. He did not come to Dublin; my work did not allow my going to London except at times when he was not playing there. Those five years were to him a triumphant progress in his art and fame. He rose; and rose; and rose. The Bells in 1871 was followed in 1872 by Charles I., in 1873 by Eugene Aram and Richelieu, in 1874 by Philip and Hamlet, in 1875 by Macbeth, and in 1876 by Othello and Queen Mary.
For my own part, being then in the Civil Service, I could only get away in the “ prime of summer time “ as my seniors preferred to take their holiday in the early summer or the late autumn. I had, when we next met, been for five years a dramatic critic. In 1871 my growing discontent with the attention accorded to the stage in the local news- papers had culminated with the neglect of Two Roses. I asked the proprietor of one of the Dublin newspapers whom I happened to know, Dr. Maunsell, an old contemporary and friend of Charles Lever, to allow me to write on the subject in the Mail. He told me frankly that the paper could not afford to pay for such special work, as it was in accordance with the local custom of the time done by the regular staff who wrote on all subjects as required. I replied that I would gladly do it without fee or reward. This he allowed me to carry out.
From my beginning the work in November 1871 I had an absolutely free hand. I was thus able to direct public attention, so far as my paper could effect it, where in my mind such was required. In those five years I think I learned a good deal. As Bacon says, “ Writing maketh an exact man,” and as I have always held that in matters critical the critic’s personal honour is involved in every word he writes I could always feel that the duty I had undertaken was a grave one. I did not shirk work in any way; indeed, I helped largely to effect a needed reform as to the time when criticism should appear. In those days of single printings from slow presses “ copy “ had to be handed in very early. The paper went to press not long after midnight, and there were few men who could see a play and write the criticism in time for the morning’s issue. It thus happened that the critical article was usually a full day behind its time. Monday night’s performance was not generally reviewed till Wednesday at earliest; the instances which I have already given afford the proof. This was very hard upon the actors and companies making short vists. The public en bloc is a slow-moving force; and when possibility of result is cut short by effluxion of time it is a sad handicap to enterprise and to exceptional work.
I do not wish to be egotistical and I trust that no reader may take it that I am so, in that I have spoken of my first experiences of Henry Irving and how, mainly because of his influence on me, I undertook critical work with regard to his own art. My purpose in doing so is not selfish. I merely wish that those who honour me by reading what I have written should understand something which went before our personal meeting; and why it was that when we did meet we came together with a loving and understanding friendship which lasted unbroken till my dear friend passed away.
Looking back now after an interval of nearly forty years, during which time I was mainly too busy to look back at all, I can understand something of those root-forces which had so strange an influence on both Irving’s life and my own, though at the first I was absolutely unconscious of even their existence. Neither when I first saw Irving in 1867, nor when I met him in 1876 nor for many years after I had been his close friend and fellow worker did I know that his early experiences of Dublin had been painful to the last degree. I thought from the way in which the press had ignored him and his work that they must have been bad enough in 1867 and 1871. But later on, when in the prolonged sweetness of years of success the bitterness of that early chagrin had passed away, he told me the story to this effect:
Quite early in his life as an actor — when he was only twenty-one — in an off season when the “ resting “ actor grasps at any chance of work, he received from Mr. Harry Webb, then Manager of the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin, with whom he had played at the Edinburgh Theatre, an offer of an engagement for some weeks. This he joyfully accepted and turned up in due course. He did not know then, though he learned it with startling rapidity, that he was wanted to fill the place of a local. favourite who had been, for some cause, summarily dismissed. The public visited their displeasure on the new-comer, and in no uncertain way. From the moment of his coming on the stage on the first night of his engagement until almost its end he was not allowed to say one word without interruption. Hisses and stamping, catcalls and the thumping of sticks were the universal accompaniments of his speech.
Now to an actor nothing is so deadly as to be hissed. Not only does it bar his artistic effort but it hurts his self-esteem. Its manifestation is a negation of himself, his power, his art. It is present death to him qud artist, with the added sting of shame. Well did the actors who crowded the court at Bow Street when the vanity-mad fool who murdered poor William Terriss know it. The murderer was an alleged actor, and they wanted to punish him. When he was placed in the dock, with one impulse they hissed him In Irving’s case at the Queen’s the audience with some shameful remnant of fair play treated him well the last two nights of his performance and cheered him. It was manifestly intended as a proof that it was not against the man that their protest was aimed — though he was the sufferer by it; but against any one who might have taken the place of their favourite whom they considered had been injured. It could not have been the actor on whom they lavished either hisses or cheers for they had never even heard the sound of his voice, except in the pauses of their own tumult. But to him the effect was the same.
That early visit to Dublin has so many interesting points that it may be worth while to go into it in detail.
The actor who had been dismissed was Mr. Vincent. He had played on the Saturday night, March 3, up to which time Irving had been giving Readings. On the sudden summons he came quickly, and on the first night of his engagement, Monday, March 5, played to the Othello of Mr. T. C. King the part of Cassio with which he was already familiar.
On the 8th was given Gerold Griffin’s play Gisippus; or, The Forgotten Friend, in which Irving took the part of Titus Quintus Fulvius lately vacated by Mr. Vincent.
The engagement was for four weeks terminating on Saturday, March 31; and during the remainder of that time he played the following parts: Laertes in Hamlet — the only play of which any press notice was taken of his performance, the Freeman ‘s Journal speaking of it as “ a clever and judicious performance “; Florizel in A Winter’s Tale; Frank Fairplay in Boots at the Swan — another of Mr. Vincent’s parts; Colonel Davenport in The British Legion (called at other times, The Volunteers); Lucien de Nerval in Pauline; or, A Night of Terror; Didier in The Courier of Lyons; and Dangle in The Critic. From which it will be seen that there were varied opportunities ofjudging of an actor’s talents.
Of this engagement Irving spoke to an interviewer in 18gi apropos of an outrage, unique to him, inflicted on Toole shortly before at Coatbridge — a place of which the saying is: “ There is only a sheet of paper between Hell and Coatbridge.”
“Did you ever have any similar experience in your own career, Mr. Irving?”
“... I did have rather a nasty time once, and suffered much as Mr. Toole has done from the misplaced emotions of the house. It was in this way — when I was a young man — away back about 1859 “ (should be 186o) “ I should say it was — I was once sent for to fulfil an engagement of six weeks at the Queen’s Theatre, a minor theatre in the Irish capital
. It was soon after I had left here, Edinburgh. I got over all right, and was ready with my part, but to my amazement, the moment I appeared on the stage I was greeted with a howl of execration from the pit and gallery. There was I standing aghast, ignorant of having given any cause of offence, and in front of me a raging Irish audience, shouting, gesticulating, swearing probably, and in various forms indicating their disapproval of my appearance. I was simply thunderstruck at the warmth of my reception.... I simply went through my part amid a continual uproar — groans, hoots, hisses, catcalls, and all the appliances of concerted opposition. It was a roughish experience that!”
. “ But surely it did not last long?”
“That depends,” replied the player grimly, “ on what you call long. It lasted six weeks.... I was as innocent as yourself of all offence, and could not for the life of me make out what was wrong. I had hurt nobody; had said nothing insulting; I had played my parts not badly for me. Yet for the whole of that time I had every night to fight through my piece in the teeth of a house whose entire energies seemed to be concentrated in a personal antipathy to myself.”
It was little wonder that the actor who had thus suffered undeservedly remembered the details though the time had so long gone by that he made error as to the year. No wonder that the time the Purgatorial suffering seemed 5o per cent. longer than its actual duration. Other things of more moment had long ago passed out of his mind — he had supped full of success and praise; but the bitter flavour of that month of pain hung all the same in his cup of memory.
An actor never forgets a hiss! Collot d’Herbois was once hissed at Lyons. Did he forget? Read history for the effect it had on him — and on others — in the massacre of Brumaire in the Year II. of the Republic (November 1793). The historical episode was typical, though happily on that occasion the effect was out of the usual proportion to the cause.
How his own painful episode hung in Irving’s mind can hardly be expressed in words. For years he did not speak of it even to me when telling me of how on March 12, 186o, he played Laertes to the Hamlet of T. C. King. It was not till after more than a quarter of a century of unbroken success that he could bear even to speak of it. Not even the consciousness of his own innocence in the whole affair could quell the mental disturbance which it caused him whenever it came back to his thoughts.
II
When, then, Henry Irving came to Dublin in 1876, though it was after a series of triumphs in London running into a term of years, he must have had some strong misgivings as to what his reception might be. It is true that the early obloquy had lessened into neglect; but no artist whose stock-in-trade is mainly his own personality could be expected to reason with the same calmness as that Parliamentary candidate who thus expressed the grounds of his own belief in his growing popularity:
“I am growing popular!”
“Popular! “ said his friend. “ Why last night I saw them pelt you with rotten eggs!”
“Yes! “ he replied with gratification, “ that is right! But they used to throw bricks!”
In London the bricks had been thrown, and in plenty. There are some persons of such a temperament that they are jealous of any new idea — of any thing or idea which is outside their own experience or beyond their own reasoning. The new ideas of thoughtful acting which Irving introduced won their way, in the main, splendidly. But it was a hard fight, for there were some violent and malignant writers of the time who did not hesitate to stoop to any meanness of attack. It is extraordinary how the sibilation of a single hiss will win through a tempest of cheers! The battle, however, was being won; when Irving came to Dublin he brought with him a reputation consolidated by the victorious conclusions of five years of strife. The new method was already winning its way.
It so happens that I was myself able through a “ fortuitous concourse “ of facts to have some means of comparison between the new and the old.
My father, who was born in 1798 and had been a theatre-goer all his life, had seen Edmund Kean in all his Dublin performances. He had an immense admiration for that actor, with whom none of the men within thirty years of his death were, he said, to be compared. When the late Barry Sullivan came on tour and played a range of the great plays he had enormous success. My father; then well over seventy, did not go to the play as often as he had been used to in earlier days; but I was so much struck with the force of Barry Sullivan’s acting that I persuaded to come with me to see him play Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way to Pay Old Debts — one of his greatest successes, as it had been one of Kean’s. At first he refused to come, saying that it was no use his going as he had seen the greatest of all actors in the part and did not care to see a lesser one. However, he let me have my way, and went; and we sat together in the third row of the pit which had been his chosen locality in his youth. He had been all his life in the Civil Service serving under four Monarchs — George III., George IV., William IV. and Victoria — and retiring after fifty years of service. In those days, as now, the home Civil Service was not a very money-making business, and it was just as well that he preferred the pit. I believed then that I preferred it also; for I too was then in the Civil Service.
He sat the play out with intense eagerness; and as the curtain fell on the frenzied usurer driven mad by thwarted ambition and the loss of his treasure, feebly spitting at the foes he could not master as he sank feebly into supporting arms, he turned to me and said:
“He is as good as the best of them!”
Barry Sullivan was a purely traditional actor of the old school. All his movements and gestures, readings, phrasings, and times were in exact accordance with the accepted style. It was possible, therefore, for my father to judge fairly, though longo intervallo. I saw Barry Sullivan in many plays: Hamlet, Richelieu, Macbeth, King Lear, The Gamester, The Wife’s Secret, The Stranger, RichardIII., The Wonder, Othello, The School for Scandal, as well as playing Sir Giles Overreach, and some more than once; I had a fair opportunity of comparing his acting over a wide range with the particular play by which my father judged. Ab uno disce omnes is hardly a working rule in general, but one example is a world better than none. I can fairly say that the actor’s general excellence was fairly represented by his characterisation and acting of Sir Giles. I had also seen Charles Kean, G. V. Brook, T. C. King, Charles Dillon and Vandenhoff. I had therefore in my own mind some kind of a standard by which to judge of the worth of the old school, tracing it back to its last great exemplar.
When, therefore, I came to contrast it with the new school of Irving I was building my opinion not on sand but upon solid ground. Let me say how the change from the old to the new affected me; it is allowable, I suppose, in matters of reminiscence to take personal example. Hitherto I had only seen Irving in two characters, Captain Absolute and Digby Grant. The former of these was a part in which for at least ten years — for I was a playgoer very early in life — I had seen other actors all playing the part in a conventional manner. As I have explained, I had only in Irving’s case been struck by his rendering of his own part within the conventional lines. The latter part was of quite a new style — new to the world in its essence as its method, and we of that time and place had no standard with regard to it, no means or opportunity of comparison. It was, therefore, with very great interest that we regarded the playing of this actor who was accepted in the main as a new giant. To me as a critic, with the experience of five years of the work, the occasion was of great moment; and I am free to confess that I was a little jealous lest the new-comer — even though I admired so much his work as I had seen — should overthrow my friend and countryman. For at this time Barry Sullivan was more than an acquaintance; we had spent a good many hours together talking over acting and stage history generally. Indeed I began my critical article thus:
“When an actor has arrived at the distinction which Mr. Henry Irving has undoubtedly achieved, he must not be judged by the same rules of praise and blame as hold good in the judgment of less distinguished performers. Mr. Irving holds in th
e minds of all who have seen him a high place as an artist, and by some he is regarded as the Garrick of his age; and so we shall judge him by the highest standard which we know.”
At the first glance, after the lapse of time, this seems if not unfair at least hard upon the actor; but the second thought shows a subtle, though unintentional compliment: Henry Irving had already raised in his critic, partly by the dignity of his own fame and partly through the favourable experience of the critic, the standard of criticism. He was to be himself the standard of excellence! His present boon to us was that he had taught us to Mink. Let me give an illustration.
Barry Sullivan was according to accepted ideas a great Macbeth. I, for one, thought so. He had great strength, great voice, great physique of all sorts; a well-knit figure with fine limbs, broad shoulders and the perfect back of a prize-fighter. He was master of himself and absolutely well versed in the parts which he played. His fighting power was immense and in the last act of the play good to see. The last scene of all, when the “ flats “ of the penultimate scene were drawn away in response to the usual carpenter’s whistle of the time, was disclosed as a bare stage with wings of wild rock and heather. At the back was Macbeth’s Castle of Dunsinane seen in perspective. It was supposed to be vast, and occupied the whole back of the scene. In the centre was the gate, double doors in a Gothic archway of massive proportions. In reality it was quite eight feet high, though of course looking bigger in the perspective. The stage was empty, but from all round it rose the blare of trumpets and the roll of drums. Suddenly the Castle gates were dashed back and through the archway came Macbeth, sword in hand and buckler on arm. Dashing with really superb vigour down to the footlights he thundered out his speech:
