Complete Works of Bram Stoker (683 page)

“What was it? I thought some one had thrown a bomb-shell in through the window!”

“That was exactly what I wanted you to think 1 “ said Irving quietly. “ That is what those in Curran’s house would have felt when they recognised that the fury to which they had been listening and whose cause they could not understand was directed towards them. You are in the rare position now, my dear Marshall, of the dramatist who can write of high emotion from experience. The audience are bound to recognise the sincerity of your work. Just write your scene up to that effect. Let the audience feel even an indication of the surprise and fear that you have just felt yourself, and your play will be a success! “ He said this very seriously but with a bland smile and his eyes twinkling, for through all the gravity of the issue in the shape of a good play he enjoyed the humour of the situation. Frank Marshall recovered his nerves and his buoyancy after a while, and when we broke up in the early morning he took his way home eager to get to work afresh and full of ideas.

As Irving was for the time debarred from playing the piece, when completed he let Boucicault have it to see what he could do with it. He did not, I think, improve it. Boucicault played it himself in America, but without much success.

The following list, not by any means complete, will show something of the wide range which Irving covered in his search for suitable plays. I give it because certain writers, who do not know much of the man whom they criticise so flippantly or so superciliously, have been in the habit of saying that Irving did not encourage British dramatists. To those who were on the “ inside track “ their utterances often meant that he did not accept, pay for, and produce their worthless plays or those of their friends, and he did not talk about his business to chance corners. Moreover, he held that it was not good for any one to produce an inferior play. The greatest of all needs of a theatre manager is a sufficiency of plays, and it is sheer ignorant folly for any one to assert that a manager does not accept good plays out of some crass obstinacy or lack of ability on his own part.

Author W. G. Wills 11

Frank Marshall Richard Voss J. J. C. Clarke 11

Fergus Hume. Penrhyn Stanlaws H. T. Johnson... Egerton Castle and Walter Pollock _ 0. Booth and J. Dixon J. M. Barrie. F. C. Burnand _

11 • •

H. Guy Carleton. Ludwig Fulda _ Walter Pollock.

Play Rienzi Mephisto King Arthur Don Quixote Robert Emmett Schuldig George Washington Don Quixote The Vestal The End of the Hunting The Jester King Saviolo Jekyll and Hyde (from Stevenson) The Professor’s Love Story The Isle of St. Tropez The Count The Balance of Comfort The Bloody Marriage Villon For obvious reasons I do not give what any of these authors received for play or option or advance fees; but the total was over nine thousand pounds.

Regarding one of the plays, Irving’s exact reason for not playing it was that he felt it would not suit him  —  or rather that he would not suit it. He liked the play extremely, and when after studying the scenario very carefully he had to come to the conclusion that it was not in his own special range  of work, he obtained permission from the author to submit it to two of his friends in turn, John L. Toole and John Hare. Both these players were delighted with the work, but neither had it in his vogue. Finally another actor saw his way to it, and made with it both a hit and fortune.

The play was Barrie’s The Professor’s Love Story; the actor who played it E. S. Willard. This is a good instance of delayed fortune. For my own part, knowing the peculiar excellences and strength of the three players who refused it, I cannot but think that they were all right. The play is an excellent one, but wants to be exactly fitted. Irving was naturally too strong for it; Toole was a low comedian, and it is not in the vein of Low Comedy; Hare’s incisive finesse would have militated against that unconsciousness of effect which is the “ note “ of the Professor.

III

In addition to the above plays on which he adventured wholly or in part Irving made efforts regarding plays by other authors, amongst whom were Mrs. Steel, K. and Hesketh Pritchard, Marion Crawford, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Arthur Jones, W. L. Courtney, Miss Mary Wilkins, Robert Barr. These included the possible dramatisation of several novels.

A. W. Pinero was always regarded by Irving as a great intellectual force, and to the last he was in hopes that some day he would have the opportunity of playing in a piece by him. He often expressed his wish to Pinero; and more than once have Pinero and I talked and corresponded on the subject. Pinero, however, would not think of giving Irving a play that would not have suited him. He had for Irving a very profound regard and a deep personal affection. They were always the best of friends and Pinero was loyalty itself. I do not think that any man understood Irving’s power and the excellence of his method better than he did. I fear, however, that that very affection and regard stood in the way of a play; Pinero, I think, wanted to surpass himself on Irving’s behalf.

CHAPTER LIX

MUSICIANS

Boito  —  Paderezvski  —  Henschel  —  Richter  —  Liszt  —  Gounod

I

MUSICIANS always took a deep interest in Irving’s work both as actor and manager. They seemed to understand in a peculiarly subtle way the significance of everything he did.

II

BOITO

Boito came to the Lyceum on June 13, 1893, when we were playing Becket. I talked with him in his box and in the little drawing-room of the royal box. He afterwards came round on the stage to see Irving. He was wonderfully impressed with Becket. He said to me that Irving was “ the greatest artist he had ever seen.” Two nights later, 15th June, he came to supper in the Beefsteak Room. Irving had got some musicians and others to meet him. The following were of the party: A. C. Mackenzie, Villiers Stanford, Damrosch, Jules Claretie, Renaud, Brisson, Le Clerc, Alfred Gilbert, Toole, Hare, Sir Charles Euan Smith, Bancroft, Coquelin, Cadet  —  an extraordinary group of names in so small a gathering.

III

PADEREWSKI

Paderewski was greatly taken with Irving’s playing and with the man himself. He came to supper one night in the Beefsteak Room. Irving met him several times and was an immense admirer of his work. He offered to write for Irving music for some play that he might be doing. I met him a good many times privately, and heard him play in the house of Mrs. Goetz in Hyde Park Terrace in 1891, 1892, and 1895. On one of these occasions he played Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia, an Interlude of Mozart, and an Interlude and a waltz by Chopin. It was certainly a delightful occasion.

I remember one very peculiar incident in which Paderewski had a part. Whilst we were playing in New York, Hall Caine, who had been up in Canada trying to arrange the copyright trouble there, came to New York also. One Sunday in November 1895 he and I took a walk in the afternoon. Our destination took us down Fifth Avenue, which in those days was a great Sunday promenade. Hall Caine was soon recognised  —  he is, as some one said, “ very like his portraits “; and as he has an enormous vogue in America certain of the crowd began to follow after him at a little distance. It is of the nature of a crowd to increase, if merely because it is a crowd; and in a short time I saw, when by some chance I looked back, a whole streetful of people close behind us and the crowd momentarily swelling. We increased our pace a little, wishing to get away; but the crowd kept equal pace. Between 42nd and 4oth Street we met another crowd coming up the Avenue following Paderewski who was walking with a friend. We stopped to talk, whereupon both crowds pressed in on us  —  it was too interesting an opportunity to be missed to see two such men, and each so remarkable in appearance, together.

It was with some difficulty, and by going into a hotel on one side and leaving it by another that we managed to escape.

It is always interesting to the public to see a grouping of popular favourites. In the course of my own experience I have met with many such instances  —  which is natural enough considering that I lived for more than twenty-five years amongst great artists. One such occasion I remember well: a lovely Sunday afternoon in early June 1887 when Irving had a coaching party to Oatlands Park where we dined with him. The whole road out of London was thronged with people, for the chestnuts were out in Bushey Park. On the box of the coach sat Irving and Toole and General (then Colonel) Cody “ Buffalo Bill “ who Coriolanus-like had that spring struck London “ like a planet.” The grouping took the public taste and we swept along always to an accompaniment of admiring wonder, sometimes to an accompaniment of cheers.

GEORG HENSCHEL

Georg Henschel was from the very first a great admirer of Irving away back from 1879, and so he used to come to the Lyceum and sometimes stay to supper in the Beefsteak Room, or in the room we used before it. I shall never forget one night when he sang to us. There were a very few others present, all friends and all lovers of music. Two items linger in my memory unfailingly; one a lullaby of Handel and the other the “ Elders’ Song “ from Handel’s Susannah. I had myself first heard him sing at the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace in 1878, when I was much struck by his magnificent voice and his power of using it. We had all become great friends before he went to Boston where  —  I think succeeding Gerische  —  he took over the conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He had wished to study practically orchestral music. One forenoon  —  February 28, 1884  —  by previous arrangement Irving and I went to the Music Hall to hear his orchestra play Schumann’s Manfred. It was quite a private performance given entirely for Irving; the gentlemen of the orchestra, all fine musicians, were delighted to play for him. He was entranced with the music and the rendering of it. When we were driving back to the Vendome Hotel in Commonwealth Avenue where we were both staying he talked all the time about the possibilities of producing Byron’s play. He had had it in his mind for a long time as a work to be undertaken; indeed the ripaition which we had just heard was the outcome of his having mentioned the matter to Henschel on a previous occasion. He was nearer to making up his mind to a definite production that morning than he had ever been or ever was afterwards.

It was agreed between them that later on, if he should undertake to do Julius Casar, for which he had already arranged the book, Henschel was to compose the music for it.

V

HANS RICHTER

Hans Richter was another great admirer of Irving. He too is a great master of his own art, and has the appreciative insight that only comes with greatness. Richter was not only a musician; he had had so much experience of stage production at Bayreuth and elsewhere that if he did not originate he at least understood all about it. I remember one day, 24th October 1900, after lunch with the Miss Gaskells in Manchester, when he talked with me about the new effect for The Flying Dutchman at the Wagner Festival on the following year. This was especially regarding lighting. They had succeeded in so arranging lights that the two ships were to approach each other one in broad sunlight, the other bathed in moonlight.

With Hans Richter I had once the felicity of another such experience in its own way as Irving’s comprehensive reading of Hamlet; truly another delightful experience of the survey of a great work at the hands of a master. It was when in the house of my friend E. W. Hennell, Hans Richter amongst a few friends sat down to the piano and gave us a resume of Wagner’s Meistersinger, singing snatches of the songs as he went on, and now and again explaining some subtle purpose in the music that he played. It was an hour of breathless delight which no money could purchase. With my wife I attended the Wagner Cycle at Bayreuth that summer and heard the opera in all its magnificent perfection; but I never got so clear an insight to the great composer’s purpose as when Richter pictured it for us.

VI

THE ABBE FRANZ LISZT

On i4th April 1886 Abbe Liszt came to the Lyceum to see Faust and to stay to supper in the Beefsteak Room. He was then the guest of Mr. Littleton, staying at his house at Sydenham. At that time musical London made such a rush for the old man that it was absolutely necessary to guard him when he came to the theatre. All the real music lovers of the younger generation wanted to see him, for they had not had opportunity before and were not likely to have it again. He was then seventy-five years of age and had practically given up playing inasmuch as he only played to please himself or his friends. That night he was accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Littleton together with the sons and daughters-in-law of the latter, and by Stavenhagen his pupil, and Madame Muncacksy. As it was necessary to keep away all who might intrude upon him  —  enthusiasts, interviewers, cranks, autograph-fiends, notoriety seekers who would like to be seen in his box  —  we arranged a sort of fortress for him. Next to the royal box on the grand tier O.P. was another box separated only by a partition, part of which could be taken down. This box was on the outside from the Proscenium. ^^e had the door of this box screwed up so that entrance to it could only be had through the royal box. Liszt sat here with some of the others unassailable, as one of the Mr. Littletons kept the key of the other box and none could obtain entrance without permission.

There was an interesting party at supper in the Beefsteak Room, amongst them, in addition to the party at the play, the following: Ellen Terry, Professor Max-Muller, Lord and Lady Wharncliffe, Sir Alexander and Lady Mackenzie, Sir Alfred Cooper, Walter Bach and Miss Bach, Sir Morell Mackenzie, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Littleton, Mr. and Mrs. Augustus Littleton, Mr. and Mrs. William Beatty Kingston, and the Misses Casella.

Liszt sat on the right hand of Ellen Terry who faced Irving. From where I sat at the end of the table I could not but notice the quite extraordinary resemblance in the profiles of the two men. After supper Irving went round and sat next him and the likeness became a theme of comment from all present. Irving was then forty-eight years of age; but he looked still a young man, with raven black hair and face without a line. His neck was then without a line or mark of age. Liszt, on the other hand, looked older than his age. His stooping shoulders and long white hair made him seem of patriarchal age. Nevertheless the likeness of the two men was remarkable.